Torrential rain paralysed sugar harvesting in much of eastern Cuba through central Camaguey province this week, local sources said, all but washing out area efforts to recoup tonnage from a disastrous season.
Cuban plantations lack adequate drainage and the harvest is 90 percent mechanised. Excessive rainfall prevents the passage of cutting machines and other equipment for days, and the mills close down.
Unseasonal rainfall and heat have combined with industrial and organisational problems to make the 2007 harvest one of the worst on record, with output to date estimated by Reuters at just over 1 million tonnes of raw sugar, based on provincial reports, compared with the 1.5 million to 1.6 million tonnes that had been planned by May 1.
But now Cuba's hot and rainy summer has set in right on schedule, making it all but impossible for cutting machines to operate and trucks to move cane, and lowering yields.
Thousands of workers are being mobilised to cut cane by hand, but even that is difficult, local experts said. "The rainy season has set in, and how. They will wait and see if the situation improves over the next few weeks, but if not they may end the harvest and wait till next year," a local expert said of the situation in eastern Cuba.
All but two of Cuba's 13 sugar-producing provinces are below target, with the most difficult situation facing Camaguey and the five eastern provinces responsible for more than 50 percent of the harvest and with a combined shortfall of around 400,000 tonnes.
Moving west, there has been only scattered rainfall and most mills remained open this week, as three more provinces neared their targets. This season, Cuba hoped to launch a new era for sugar, once its most important industry, after a 15-year decline in the harvest from 8 million raw tonnes produced in 1990 to 1.2 million tonnes in 2006, one of the lowest on record. Cuba will most likely have to import sugar to meet its 700,000-tonne domestic demand and contracts, local traders and analysts said.
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