Cuban Coffee Harvest Begins with High Hopes

[El Presidente]

Cuban Coffee Harvest Begins with High Hopes

Aug 6 - Cuba's coffee harvest began this week with high hopes the all-but-destroyed crop would begin a sustained recovery as part of President Raul Castro's efforts to lower food imports and increase exports.

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Friday's official daily Granma quoted Deputy Agriculture Minister Ramon Frometa as forecasting an increase of 1,200 tonnes of semi-processed beans over last year's 6,000 tonnes, the lowest output since well before the 1959 revolution when production reached 60,000 tonnes.

The poor performance came despite a series of reforms aimed at increasing agricultural output undertaken by President Raul Castro, who took over for his brother Fidel Castro two years ago.

Since then, the state has leased abandoned coffee plantations to hundreds of individuals to grow coffee. And local agriculture committees, granted more powers under the reform, have worked to better prepare the crop.

The state also has tripled the price it pays farmers for their beans, and added an additional premium for the highest quality product.

Cuba's National Assembly last week discussed the dismal state of the coffee crop and, for the first time, blamed state bungling and not the U.S. embargo or the revolution's success in creating more attractive employment in the cities.

"There has been a lack of will and aggressiveness to overcome the obstacles we ourselves have created and which hamper fulfillment of plans and output," a report by the parliament's economic committee stated.

The committee reviewed a five-year recovery plan that would increase coffee production to 22,000 tonnes by 2015.

Cuba imported around 30,000 tonnes of coffee in 2009 at a cost of $45 million, while coffee exports garnered a mere $3.4 million, according to the government's 2009 statistical abstract.

Picking begins in August and ends in March, though most beans are harvested from October into January.

Communist Cuba's 35,000 growers, in exchange for low-interest government credits and subsidized supplies, must sell all of their coffee to the state at prices that historically have been below what the beans fetch on the black market.

Local analysts said that system led to low production and the diversion of 10 to 20 percent of the crop.

[Leopolis Semper Fidelis]

Cuban Coffee Harvest Begins with High Hopes

Aug 6 - Cuba's coffee harvest began this week with high hopes the all-but-destroyed crop would begin a sustained recovery as part of President Raul Castro's efforts to lower food imports and increase exports.

Daily News Alerts

http://www.flex-news-food.com/console/Page...aspx?page=31550

Cuba's National Assembly last week discussed the dismal state of the coffee crop and, for the first time, blamed state bungling and not the U.S. embargo or the revolution's success in creating more attractive employment in the cities.

Not blaming the embargo? Gosh, I don't believe what I'm reading. When will they lay the blame on the real culprit: the state's Commie dictatorship and ideology?