A year-long drought in central-eastern Cuba has hit sugarcane hard, and could mean that 2004/2005 output will decline from this year's 2.52 million tonnes of raw sugar, sources said this week.
"There is no doubt the coming crop is affected. How much won't be known until the June and then September estimates," said a Cuban economist with close ties to the Sugar Ministry.
Indeed, a retired agricultural official arriving in Havana after driving the length of the country said he had never seen it worse.
"It hurt to see the cane withering under the sun, heat and lack of water," he said, adding it was obvious in eastern and central Cuba that "the cane, produce and cattle were seriously affected."
The Sugar Ministry has not commented on 2004/2005 harvest plans and the drought's potential impact.
However, Vice President Carlos Lage urged industry leaders not to become demoralised by the situation during a meeting held at the end of the harvest in late May, according to official media.
"He urged they banish the fatalism that could appear due to the drought," Radio Havana Cuba reported.
Hope that a traditionally wet May would alleviate the drought evaporated along with whatever moisture there was under near-record heat and less than 60 percent of normal precipitation, the government said.
"The unfavourable beginning of the rainy season aggravated further the prolonged drought in large parts of the country, in particular eastern Cuba," the official daily Granma reported earlier this month.
Granma said that between April 2003 and May 2004 rainfall in parts of central and eastern Cuba was 400 millimetres (16 inches) short of the norm, and worse in the provinces of Camaguey, Holguin, Las Tunas, Granma, Santiago and Guantanamo which together produced more than 1 million tonnes of raw sugar this year.
The Caribbean island's top sugar producer, central Camaguey at 310,000 tonnes this year, was reported by the official AIN news agency at 50 percent normal rainfall from September 2003 through April.
And Camaguey's May precipitation of 58 millimetres (2.2. inches) amounted to only a third of the historic average.
"Cane planted late last year is lost or in very bad shape. Standing cane scheduled for the next harvest is half the size it should be," said a sugar expert returning from a visit to the area.
The Cuban harvest begins in December with the dry season and runs into May when rainfall usually sets in.
The 2002/2003 sugar crop was the lowest in 70 years at 2.2 million tonnes after the Communist-run Caribbean country shuttered 71 of 156 mills and relegated 60 percent of sugar lands to other uses.
The world's fourth-largest sugar exporting country sells abroad all but 700,000 tonnes of the crop.
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