By Jay Amberg Bloomberg Lifestyles. Thu, 15 Feb 2001,
11:09am EST
Havana, Feb. 13 -- Initial reports from Pinar del Rio, Cuba's leading
tobacco producing province, indicate this winter's tobacco harvest in the region
could be in jeopardy because of drought and blue mold.
If these reports are true, (sometimes misleading information is released by
anti-government sources), it would mark the second consecutive year Cuba's
harvest of cigar tobacco has been damaged by weather and disease.
Cuba could be downplaying the information, seeking to avoid the publicity of
a second consecutive bad harvest.
According to Victor Rolando Arroyo, an independent journalist, the tobacco
crop in Las Martinas, an important growing region in Pinar del Rio province, is
in imminent danger of being lost to blue mold and drought.
Arroyo said irrigation was unable to save the crop because half of the 1,000
pumps used to irrigate the fields of 1,200 tobacco growers weren't working this
winter.
Cuba's harvest of tobacco leaf used in the manufacture of premium cigars
usually is in full swing by the second week in February and continues, depending
on the weather, into early March.
While some of the tobacco for cigars is harvested from larger farms in Pinar
del Rio, the bulk of the crop comes from small family-operated farms of only
five or six acres each.
"The crisis is made worse by the general lack of supplies, particularly
the insufficient quota of fuel for irrigation, which fluctuates between two and
a half to four gallons a week,'' Arroyo said. "Plastic hose is hard to come
by, too.''
Arroyo said blue mold is still prevalent because the local government sold
farmers agricultural control chemicals that were past the expiration date.
This information calls into question just how severe the drought in Pinar
del Rio could be.
Blue mold is a fungus which thrives in cool and wet conditions. According to
U.S. cigar tobacco farmers in the Connecticut River Valley, blue mold isn't
normally associated with drought.
The fungus attacks entire fields of tobacco and can force farmers to plow
under their crops. In the U.S., the most severe cases of blue mold have occurred
after prolonged periods of rain and humidity.
Cuba's new genetically engineered hybrid cigar leaf, Habano 2000, was
developed especially to combat blue mold. Habano 2000 has been planted
extensively through Pinar del Rio province and elsewhere in Cuba, so if blue
mold has invaded the province, it will be interesting to see why the new hybrid
plant was infected.
While Cuban official government figures haven't yet been released, Cuba's
2000 cigar production was expected to tumble by about 15 percent, although some
government officials said production would be 100 million-130 million cigars,
compared with 150 million a year ago.
The drop in cigar production in 2000 was blamed on a poor harvest due to
drought, mechanical failures and the theft of leaf for use in Cuba's extensive
counterfeit cigar black market.
©2001 Bloomberg L.P. All rights reserved.
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