Cuba aims for big harvest

Cuban agriculture authorities yesterday said they aimed this season to harvest more than 34,000 tons of tobacco, despite the damage caused by Hurricane Michael to the crop in the western Pinar del Rio province, according to a Xinhua News Agency story.
The president of the state-owned Tobacco Business Group (Tabacuba), Justo Fuentes, said the company had signed contracts with tobacco farmers based on that figure, before adding that “the harvest must be higher in hectares, quality and yield this year”.
The tobacco season got underway in the central Sancti Spiritus province, Cuba’s second largest tobacco producing area, on Wednesday.
Tabacuba aims to plant more than 30,000 ha this season, which will conclude in the first months of 2019.
Meanwhile, work is underway to recover from the damage caused by Hurricane Michael in the Vueltabajo region of Pinar del Rio, where thousands of tobacco ha were damaged earlier this week.
Vuetlabajo, considered by some to be the world’s best tobacco producing region, provides about 70 percent of national tobacco production in Cuba.
The tobacco industry is Cuba’s fourth largest employer, providing permanent jobs for about 200,000 people. At its peak, a quarter of a million people are employed in the harvest.
In the 2017-2018 season, producers harvested about 30,000 tons of tobacco, 6,000 tons more than during the previous season.