Rainfall benefits Cuba's sugar crop

Above-average rainfall during the last two months broke a drought that decimated Cuba's sugar crop, creating conditions for a better performance in 2006/2007, official media and local experts said Monday.
"Our Initial estimate of 1.4 million tonnes of raw sugar for the coming crop may increase a bit when a final estimate is completed this month," a local expert said.
"But there will not be a significant increase until 2007 because there is little cane, and some of that is for seed," he added, asking his name not be used.
The Cuban harvest runs from January into May, with 700,000 tonnes earmarked for domestic consumption.
"It has been raining across the entire country. These rains are very good for cane seriously damaged by the drought," Juan Varela Perez, Cuba's top sugar reporter, said on his daily radio program Friday.
An unusually active hurricane season since August has resulted in above-average rainfall from more frequent tropical depressions and bigger storms around and over Cuba.
The worst drought in a century began in eastern Cuba a number of years ago, moving west in 2004/2005.
The Sugar Ministry said drought was the main reason for this year's 48 percent drop in raw sugar production to 1.3 million tonnes, the lowest since 1907.
The government decided in June to close 43 of 85 state-run mills, a few perhaps only temporarily, and begin converting a third of 900,000 hectares (2,500,000 acres) of cane to other uses, mainly in western Cuba where there are other employment opportunities.
The hardest hit provinces of eastern Guantanamo, Holguin, Las Tunas and central Camaguey and Ciego de Avila all reported a vastly improved situation, with the remainder of the country reporting the drought is over.
"The rain has brought a better perspective. It has directly benefited development of standing cane, but even more importantly it has assured a good planting campaign for 2007," a Sugar Ministry official in Holguin said in a telephone interview on Monday.
Neighbouring Las Tunas province met its annual sowing plan for the first time in a number of years at 13,500 hectares (33,750 acres), despite planting just 4,000 hectares (10,000 acres) through May, the area's Communist party weekly said on Monday.