The number of mills is reduced year after year, but this time the loss has accelerated, after the 25 of last year.
14ymedio, Madrid, 14 October 2024 — A few weeks before the start of the 2024-2025 sugar harvest, the production of the last harvest remains a state secret. The authorities have not hidden that the campaign was bad, but the lack of data makes us fear the worst, and nothing invites us to think that things can change. This weekend, coinciding with the Day of the Sugar Worker on October 13, events were held throughout the Island that recorded the serious situation of Cuba’s once star industry.
“A very complex harvest is coming,” said William Licourt González, general secretary of the sugar workers’ union before calling on the entire sector to work. But the media are what they are, and the vice president of the Council of Ministers, Jorge Luis Tapia Fonseca, left a surprising fact the day before. In the next harvest there will be grinding in only 15 sugar mills throughout the country, the lowest number in history by far, since just three years ago there were thirty-six.
The decline in the number of sugar mills involved in grinding has been extremely accelerated. In 1959, Cuba had 161 mills that produced 5.6 million tons of sugar in that last harvest in private hands. After the nationalization of the plantations first and the mills shortly after, both in 1960, there are years in which, encouraged by the Soviet subsidy, the sector grew unstoppably, reaching production of up to eight million tons, with the decades of the 70s and 80s as the best. Although Fidel Castro’s dream of producing ten million tons was never achieved, everything went smoothly until the fall of the USSR.
In 1959, Cuba had 161 mills that produced 5.6 million tons of sugar in that last harvest in private hands
The sugar industry began to collapse with the Special Period, after the fall of the Soviet Union and the loss of its subsidies for Cuba, but there were still good data. The 1995-1996 harvest achieved 4.3 million tons, but Castro decided to take a different direction. In 2002, he ordered the production capacity to be cut in half, to give 60% of the land over to other crops. “Sugar will never return to this country; it belongs to the time of slavery,” he said in 2005, while describing the sugar sector as in “ruin.” So, the number of mills was now 66, while the harvest remained at 1.2 million tons.
There are currently 56 sugar mills in Cuba, but their dilapidated state has forced an increasingly lower use of that capacity. In 2010, 44 were employed, but in 2020-2021, there were 38. A year later, 36 were scheduled, but only three of them met the production plans, so the decision was made to go to 26 in the next harvest – 2022-2023 -, a figure that was finally reduced to 23 due to lack of resources. The plan was to produce 455,198 tons of sugar, a quantity even less than the half-million at which national consumption was calculated. In addition, at least 411,000 tons had to be sold abroad. The plan was never fulfilled, nor were the final data ever known.
In the last harvest, the one corresponding to 2023-2024, there were 25 mills grinding, 10 more than this year.
“Why don’t almost 50% of the production bases have good yields and production diversification?”
“Why don’t almost 50% of the production bases have good returns and diversification of production?” Tapia Fonseca wondered at the party meeting, held on the 11th and 12th in Havana. “We have to do an in-depth analysis to save the sugar industry. We have approved measures for the sector. The debt of many Basic Units of Cooperative Production has been renegotiated on up to three occasions. The price of cane has gone up, and differentiated attention to retirees has been promoted,” he reproached. The official asked to hold meetings between the companies that achieve good data with the majority that do not, to share experiences. “We have to transform the work of the municipal and provincial governments to better serve sugar cooperatives,” he said, in turn with the new technique of placing responsibility on local administrations.
“We cadres have to transform this issue and save the sugar industry, because the most important thing in this sector is its workers who, in the midst of difficult weather conditions, fuel shortages, energy problems and more, are working every morning to plant and produce more cane,” he said. The official newspaper Trabajadores points out that his speech achieved “applause, and precise agreements came out in black and white for the immediate performance of the sugar union,” but it does not give details of any of them.
In the previous weeks, the provincial media have often mentioned the risk of a bad harvest due to low planting, labor shortages, bad weather, lack of fuel and a litany of misfortunes that, in turn, mean fewer mills, either because there is not enough cane from fuel rationing, or because the mill itself is in a calamitous condition. The Government, however, asks mills that aren’t grinding to “diversify” their work. As a result, several of them are currently dedicated to the production of molasses, brandy and other alcohols.
Translated by Regina Anavy
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