Cuba sees best tobacco harvest in decade

[El Presidente]

Ok it is propaganda fed by the Govt and picked up by a far flung media service... but I like pretty pictures of tobacco plants 

Does anyone else find it interesting that with "perfect weather" the Pinar crop takings were 23% below expectation?

That is one crappy outcome.  I sincerely hope it is a wake up call to pay the farmers properly and on time. 

 

http://famagusta-gazette.com/cuba-sees-best-tobacco-harvest-in-decade-p41113-166.htm

Cuba sees best tobacco harvest in decade

FAMAGUSTA GAZETTE CYPRUS• Monday, 03 July, 2017

Cuban authorities are expecting the delivery of around 19,000 tons of tobacco leaf this year, after seeing the best harvest of the last decade.

Despite this success, Vice-President Jose Ramon Machado called for tobacco producers to keep working hard, as tobacco exports is a major source of revenue for Cuba, netting around 450 million U.S. dollars a year. 

"The year to come has to be even better," commented Machado this week after visiting various production centers in Pinar del Rio, Cuba's most westerly province and its main tobacco producer.

A specialist from the Tabacuba group, Virginio Morales, told journalists that this province alone brought in 13,000 tons from this harvest, albeit down from an expected 17,095 tons.

Morales added that the harvest had been particularly good due to optimal weather conditions.

In the area of Vuelta Abajo in Pinar del Rio, 19,000 hectares are set to be sowed for the 2017-2018 season with five varieties of tobacco, which are considered more resistant to disease and provide more volume.

The work is hard under the hot Cuban sun but the sowing of tobacco is a family tradition passed down from father to son. The Premium cigars will be sold by Habanos S.A., a joint venture between the state-owned Cubatabaco and Altadis, a Franco-German subsidiary of the British multinational Imperial Tobacco.

In 2016, Habanos S.A. saw income of 445 million U.S. dollars for the sale of Cuban cigars, a 5 percent rise from 2015.

Without being able to sell cigars in the U.S. due to the ongoing American blockade, Habanos S.A. still accounts for 70 percent of hand-rolled cigars sold around the world, estimated at around 400 million a year.

The tobacco company has a global distribution network across five continents and in over 150 countries.

[El Presidente]

A slightly different twist and some interesting information at the end on Tabacuba. 

 

 

Cuba will close out this season's harvest of tobacco, one of its main export crops, with almost 30,000 tons of leaf and for the 2017-2018 season 29,970 hectares (some 75,000 acres) will be sown with the crop, the state-run Tabacuba business group reported Monday.

The harvest has been progressing in a "favorable" manner given that all the country's growers have fulfilled their quotas for cropland planted in tobacco, although production has not necessarily been at its absolute maximum, according to Tabacuba agricultural director Gonzalo Rodriguez, as quoted by the state-run Cuban News Agency.

Producers in the Vueltabajo zone, in western Pinar del Rio province, who contribute approximately 70 percent of the national tobacco production, will try to bring in 19,000 tons, said the director during an event for Tobacco Workers Day.

He also said that there is a project under way to foster the planting of tobacco in the island's eastern and central zones with an eye toward providing some 8,000 tons of leaf for cigarette production in Holguin province.

Rodriguez emphasized the "significant" increase in tobacco cultivation under conditions that filter out the sunlight and retain heat around the plants to allow them to grow larger and produce better leaf, specifically for the world-famous Cuban cigars.

He also said that the harvest is expected to be completed by mid-July and this will allow growers to re-sow the fields early for next season.

Some 24,000 tons were produced during the 2015-2016 tobacco season, according to official figures.

Tabacuba is comprised of 45 companies, including 15 farms, four cigarette manufacturing firms, six service and marketing companies and three mixed companies, among others.

In all, the group oversees 96 tobacco hand-rolling factories, 46 of them devoted exclusively to export production.

Tobacco is the fourth-largest contributor to Cuba's GDP, providing $445 million to the national treasury in 2016 from the sales of the mixed Cuban-Spanish Habanos company.

 

[mwaller]

I seriously doubt that the picture is of a Cuban tobacco plant.  Cigar tobaccos are harvested when the leaves are just barely starting to yellow.  The leaves in the picture are fully ripe, which is more typical of varieties used for cigarettes...  

[El Presidente]

4 minutes ago, mwaller said:

I seriously doubt that the picture is of a Cuban tobacco plant.  Cigar tobaccos are harvested when the leaves are just barely starting to yellow.  The leaves in the picture are fully ripe, which is more typical of varieties used for cigarettes...  

Fake News!

[NSXCIGAR]

Perhaps the 23% shortfall was due to some or all of the farmers choosing to plant other crops after meeting their tobacco quotas as they've grown less happy with the pay--something Tabacuba didn't expect to happen?