Cuba was once the world’s largest producer of sugar, but since the socialist revolution in 1959 and the arrival of communism, today Cuba must import sugar. Can the industry ever recover from socialism?
Cuban independent journalist Dimas Castellanos ponders that question in Diario de Cuba:
Is the recovery of Cuba’s sugar industry possible?
Ignorance, deliberate lying, scamming Cubans and investors: all of this has affected the decisions about what was the largest national industry.
The news about the upcoming execution of 16 projects, with foreign investment, to modernize the sugar industry and build a power plant with a refinery, a 100 MW electricity generation block, and an alcohol distillery, confirms the government’s decision to continue ignoring the causes of the deterioration suffered by this branch of the economy.
Cuba, which once exported six million metric tons of sugar, now has to import it. This fact illustrates the magnitude of the damage done to sugar production. Any recovery would require two conditions, thus far absent: an accurate diagnosis and a corresponding treatment. The absence of these requirements can only be explained by the following: ignorance, deliberate lying, scamming Cubans and investors, or a combination of these.
If in 1948 six million tons were produced, and in 1952 the figure was over seven million, the reckless attempt to produce ten million tons in 1970, in addition to paralyzing the country with such a useless effort, triggered a decline until 2001, when production was less than 3.5 million tons; less than half the amount from 1952, and a volume similar to that produced in 1894, when the War of Independence had not yet broken out.
In the face of the debacle, as if the country were a military camp, in that year, 2001, an Army general was appointed to head the Sugar Ministry, charged with producing six million tons. To this end the Alvaro Reynoso Task was implemented with a view to producing 54 tons of cane per hectare (when the world average was around 70 tons) and the industry was restructured to extract 11 tons of sugar for every 100 tons of cane. The following year, 100 of the 156 existing mills were closed and sugarcane fields were used for other crops, with part of them becoming overgrown with marabou.
The results were immediate. In 2005, production was 1.3 million tons. The response to the new failure consisted of creating the municipal agricultural delegations, a new bureaucratic apparatus to more closely control the productive base. Five years later, in 2010, only 1.1 million tons could be produced.
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Cuba was once synonymous with sugar. The popular saying was “Without sugar there is no country.” The industry was extremely well run. And now it’s ruined, like Cuba in general. Gracias, Fidel (and enablers).