• Submitted by: lena campos
• Business and Economy
• 09 / 25 / 2012

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Orlando Celso Garcia, president of the Sugar Business Group (AZCUBA), said the Cuban sugar production for the 2012-13 harvest will be 20 percent higher that the previous one.

Garcia told reporters in the eastern city of Bayamo that this increase will reflect the rise in agricultural yield in the sugarcane fields, index that is keeping an upward trend.

He was in Bayamo presiding over the national awards ceremony to farming cooperatives which in the 2011-2012 season managed to harvest 45 tons of cane per hectare or more.

The ceremony took place at the Carlos Manuel de Céspedes Birthplace Museum and the first place went to the Arquímides Colina credit and services from the municipality of Bayamo, Granma province, with 96.8 tons per hectare.

That cooperative was followed by the agricultural production cooperatives 28 de Enero, from Calimete, Matanzas, (95,4); Cuba Socialista, from Madruga, Mayabeque, (90,7); Ignacio Agramonte, from Ciro Redondo, Ciego de Ávila, (90,5), and Dagoberto Rojas, also from Calimete, 90,1.

Several Cuban municipalities had an average yield of 60 tons per hectare or more: Calimete (85,2), Bayamo (79,6), Banes (74,9), Manuel Tames (64,8), Ciro Redondo (63) and Madruga (61,6).

Orlando Lugo Fonte, president of the Cuban Small Farmers Association (ANAP by its Spanish acronym) , said in the ceremony that the farmers from Cienfuegos and Las Tunas provinces are the only ones with average yields of less than 40 tonnes per hectare, but in the next harvest they will improve those numbers.

According to the latest reports from AZCUBA, this next season will start in the first days of December, and 50 of the 85 mills in the country will be fully operational by that date.

Fuente: Radio Cadena Agramonte