Posted on 10/25/2018 8:44:26 AM PDT by Olog-hai
Sugar: it’s so quintessentially Cuban that even a young, machete-wielding Fidel Castro used to hack away at the cane stalks vital to the Caribbean island’s economy.
Now, the long-time world leader in sugar production is importing the stuff for the first time, and in large amounts, from France after another bad harvest.
Sugar used to account for the vast majority of Cuba’s exports. But the fall of its big brother, the Soviet Union — a key, hungry customer — changed everything, as did a lack of investment in seeds, fertilizer and pesticides.
To wit: in the early 1990s, Cuba produced about eight million tons of sugar a year. A decade later, it stopped reaching two million a year.
Back then, sugar accounted for almost 75 percent of Cuban exports. In 2015, it was only 13 percent, with other products like nickel and tobacco making up some of the difference.
The 2017-2018 harvest suffered badly after Hurricane Irma ravaged the country, followed by a long rainy season.
So Cuba is importing sugar from France. …
(Excerpt) Read more at afp.com ...
Another great victory for socialism and the Democratic way!
Sounds like they have upped their Rum manufacturing....
If socialists were in charge of thr Sahara they would run out of sand in five years.
Their cigar industry will not likely recover from communism any time soon, either.
Amazing isn’t it? Sadly amazing.
A communist paradise which has produced so much sugar for export, now needs to import the product which their country used to produce in huge quantity.
I know the liberal view is that Cuba is so poor because of our trade embargo policies.
But, how would a trade embargo cause their agricultural production including sugar, to drop off ?? If communism is so superior, why aren’t the happy workers in the worker’s paradise more productive????
Weren’t Cuban tobacco seeds transplanted to climates & soils similar to Cuba’s decades ago? And aren’t transplant cigar products indistinguishable from those still made in Cuba?
As for importing what used to be exported, Cuba had become a net exporter of eggs prior to Castro taking over. That quickly changed and eggs became a black market commodity in the Cuban workers’ paradise.
FWIW I wanted to learn more about Cuban cuisine after my wife visited Little Havana in Miami and raved about the food. I googled for the perfect arroz con pollo, and found that most Cuban recipes contained caveats about preparing the dish “only if this ingredient is available”. Spoke volumes.
America should have taken over Cuba when we had a chance but Kennedy was inept and Castro punked us.
Fidel preferred to sprinkle gunpowder on his cereals instead of sugar.
Odd how often commie hellholes have 'bad harvests'.../s
Under their system no matter how much harder and smarter you work, your reward does not increase. So why bother? That’s why socialism/communism always fails.
“We pretend to work; they pretend to pay us.” - Commie realist
Imposing atheism is an affront to God, never mind all of the other insanity that results from central planning by people who know absolutely nothing about how to produce anything.
By now we'd have another Puerto Rico. The Johnson, Carter, Clinton and Obama administrations' policies would have seen to that, killing off incentive as they did in most of our cities.
Only run by the mob.
So it’s better to have a communist outpost in the Gulf, then? One that is being increasingly courted by socialistic entities from past and present (particularly the EU), including its former benefactor, thanks to Obama and Kerry abrogating the Monroe Doctrine.
And why must it be presumed that Puerto Rico would have necessarily turned out the way it did, never mind a non-communist Cuba following suit?
Don’t put the blood of the victims of the Fidel regime on your account.
That was Milton Friedman.
“Weren’t Cuban tobacco seeds transplanted to climates & soils similar to Cuba’s decades ago? And aren’t transplant cigar products indistinguishable from those still made in Cuba?”
I know several people who are big time cigar smokers.
You couldn’t pay them to smoke a genuine Cuban cigar these days.
They much prefer the Brazilian cigars.
They have given me samples from time to time and I have to say the superior cigars are Brazilian made.
I think Vendome is a cigar man, lets see what he thinks.
“Sugar used to account for the vast majority of Cuba’s exports. . . . changed everything, as did a lack of investment in seeds, fertilizer and pesticides.”
Sugar cane is propagated by the stalk/cane not seeds.
That’s true; most cultivars are not seed-bearing. I wouldn’t expect AFP to know that, though.
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