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Cuba sugar production was 1.1 million MT in 2010. The estimate for 2011 is close to one million MT with a population of 11.4 millions. In 1894, one year before the War of Independence, the island produced over one million MT with a population of 1.7 millions. More than 117 years later the communist regime will be producing even less.Cuba prepares for another bitter sugar harvestCuba prepares for another bitter sugar harvest | Reuters
*Government hopes to match this year's 1.1 million tonnes
*Fewer mills to open
*Joint venture talks stalled
By Marc Frank
Mon Oct 18, 2010 3:23pm BST
HAVANA, Oct 18 (Reuters) - Cuba's once proud sugar industry is gearing up for the 2011 cane harvest with fewer mills scheduled to open and hopes to merely equal this year's dismal output of 1.1 million tonnes of raw sugar, the official media reported on Monday.
The Communist party newspaper Granma, quoting deputy sugar minister Adrian Jimenez Fernandez, said 39 mills would grind the cane into raw sugar, compared with 44 the previous season and 54 in 2009, with the "mission of producing a similar amount of sugar as this year's Harvest".
This talk of Cuba's "proud" sugar industry. When was it ever proud? When the U.S. was given preferential prices? Or when Russia subsidized it so it could have access to the island? Next you'll be telling us that sugar cane farm hands(which were out of a job and income for the many months in which sugar cane production ceases) fared better before Castro. An economy which is not diversified, such as Cuba's, means that regardless of who is in power the majority of the people won't ever benefit. This is the case across the overwhelming majority of under developed nations.
A free market, could have deversified.
Spoken like somebody who has no clue what they're talking about.
Cuba had a free market before Castro and yet it had no diversified economy. A free market does not mean a diversified economy. Look at West Africa.
So much for the Communist system.
I imagine it will be no easy for the official propaganda machine try to avoid that the people will not associate the sugar imports with Florida, the larger producer of sugar cane in US. The sugar plantations and industries in Florida were developed by entrepreneurs whose industries and plantations in Cuba were confiscated by Castro brothers regime, in order to put them “to the service of the people” and to make them “more efficient and productive”. A tale that time has demonstrated it develop with a conclusion very different from the beginning. The end result has been the collapse of the sugar industry developed over centuries by hard and intelligent work of many generations. It has been cause by lack of foresight and mismanagement under the Castros dictatorial regime.
How the Castros regime can explain the reasons why they have to resort to a sugar importing country like the United States, to procure a product that traditionally exported the island. Who would have imagined that Cuba would become an importer of food, even importing sugar, from the United States, of all places?
$~.5b, accounting for ~ half of Cuban exports =/= stupid item.
In any context it is a big deal. Cuba's failing sugar industry represents the country's major industry and a massive portion of their exports.
Uh...check the numbers from 2001-2. Shall we check the percentage before that?
You can have all the excuses you want but they failed in their biggest industry.
Failed hard. "Now what?" is a reasonable question and the collapse of Cuba's export market is not a stupid item
This forces the Castro regime to seek foreign investment (read: intervention) in some regard, or risk falling back decades more from western standards of living. Cuba needs tourism, badly.
Hello casinos, the Batista days are here again. Havana, no Rules! Wooo!
US sugar does not represent the vast majority of our exports or GDP. Apples and oranges.
Looking at 2008 numbers is meh, the industry fell apart in the past decade not last night. It's only now that it has reached very embarrassing and dangerous shortcomings wit no sign of possible recovery.
The only thing loony is you thinking that sugar should matter to the US as much as it does to Cuba.
Cuba's sugar problem = bad government.
They were ill-prepared and are facing a crisis. Let's not waste time blaming everyone else. One cannot demand to operate in a static market environment just because their sluggish, archaic government is unable to adapt and overcome. Stop playing the victim card for an ineffective (and tyranical) government. Time came for change and they failed; those commies are lucky we don't allow failing to evolve politically and economically to cause their extinction.
They will get bailed out for this lack of adaptability, but they will continue to live decades behind their neighbors as long as tyranny reigns.
In the Cuban case your argument doesn´t apply. Cuban economist looking at the future recognized the need for agricultural diversification and industrialization. The economist Dr. Joaquín Martínez Sáenz, appointed president of the Cuba National bank in 1952, develop an economic policy oriented to the diversification and industrialization of the island.The Batista-era was not exactly a free market. However, you are correct that a free market will not necessarily lead to a diversified market. Actually a free market should actually lead to a less diversified market in the context of global trade as comparative advantage results in industries in certain non-competitive regions dying off. There is a reason that the US doesn't make T-shirts anymore in large numbers and why Mexico doesn't write software. Actual free markets should on a broad scale, especially in total dollar value, become very specialized markets. And considering Cuba's geographical location, it does not suggest that it could become significantly diversified. Virtually no island nation has its GDP gathered from dozens of industries. Most are dependent upon a handful, if not one, usually tourism. Nauru for instance is massively dependent upon phosphate exports.
Your statement is only partially true. The demise of the Cuban sugar industry has to do with the deficiencies of the regime and management of it. Castro, in 1959, blamed the sugar industry as the major determinant of underdevelopment in the island, and the “economic genius” Che Guevara said that the American sugar quota was and “instrument of imperialist oppression.” When Guevara was appointed minister of industries in 1961, in his pursue of diversification, he reduced the sugar cane cultivated area and diverted idle manpower to other activities. His attempt to industrialization failed and by 1963 the plan was abandoned. Fidel Castro reverse course in 1965 and declared that sugar was the backbone of the economy. In the following 25 years the sugar production grows by 40% and the island maintained his position as the world’s larger sugar exported. During those years Cuba sugar industry remained largely artificial. Cuba who was leaving behind the monoculture, was brought back to it under Castro’s impulsive and incompetent leadership.Cuba's not Communist. Cuba has social classes, dictators, and no power to the people. Not to mention it does trade with the West. That's basically failing every major Marx test to be Communist.
That said, Cuba has been exceptionally poorly managed. But the sugar probably has more to do with Brazil's constantly expanding sugar production depressing prices. There's no way Cuba can manage the economy of scale Brazil can with its sugar. Comparative Advantage clearly favors Brazil. The fact that government sugar mills in Cuba are closing is a partial sign of that.
The US tariff on imported sugar isn’t new. In 1917 the US government started its intervention in the sugar industry by fixing the top price in its internal market. In 1923 the sugar cane production started to increase in the Philippines, Hawaii and Puerto Rico. In 1929 the tariff Hawley-Smoot on imported sugar was approved to protect the American sugar producers.You do realize that prior to the excessive tariff placed on imported sugar, the US production was on a serious decline? The US sugar industry exists because the government is protecting them from free markets. And American consumers are paying more then they should for sugar. There's a reason why food producers use high fructose corn syrup over sugar. Because sugar's price in artificially high in the US due to government manipulation.
Because they are an island with expanding population? The same problem every island nation with expanding population has? Your grasp of economics, especially developmental coupled with geography is appallingly shallow.
Oh I forgot. You don't respond to anyone who points out the flaws in your arguments.
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