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December 17, 2002



Cuba News / Yahoo!

Yahoo! December 16, 2002.

Cuba looks to genetic engineering to help save sugar crop

By Paul Elias, Ap Biotechnology Writer

HAVANA - Can biotechnology save Cuba's sugar industry? Something has to.

Some 100,000 fewer machete-wielding cane cutter and factory workers are taking to the Cuban fields and mills this month in the saddest sugar harvest here in recent memory.

Since June, Cuba has shuttered 71 of its 156 sugar mills and ordered more than half the country's sugar fields used for other crops. The country is bracing for a historic low sugar output, and it will be more difficult than ever to sell what they produce.

World sugar prices continue to plunge to all-time lows as the cost of the petroleum needed to process Cuba's once all-important crop rises. Long gone are the days when the Soviet bloc paid Cuba above-market prices for sugar while supplying the island nation with cheap fuel.

"We have analyzed this at the highest government levels," said Nelson Labrada, vice minister of Cuba's Sugar Ministry. "We have arrived at the conclusion that we have to innovate."

According to the ministry, last year's sugar harvest brought in US$80 million. That's US$120 million less than the year before and far from the US$1 billion annually Cuba could count on a decade ago. This year's sales could plunge by another 50 percent.

"Prices remain stagnant and that's unlikely to change," said John Kavulich, president of the New York-based U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council. "Cuba is a highly inefficient producer of raw sugar. Sugar production has been a huge financial drain for years."

Necessity may be the mother of invention, but in Cuba desperation is a close kin.

That's where Havana's Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology comes in.

Gil Enriquez and other scientists at the center in a Havana suburb are tinkering with the sugar cane's genes, splicing in material from a bacterium that produces fructose. Natural sugar cane yields sucrose, common sugar table sugar.

Fructose, which is less fattening and twice as sweet as sucrose, is used in thousands of products, from corn syrup to fast-food hamburger buns.

If successful, Cuba would need much less cane to produce the same amount of sweetener and be able to fetch premium prices — a prospect so promising that Cuba obtained a U.S. patent five years ago on its process of engineering fructose into sugar cane.

It's one of about two dozen U.S. patents the Cubans hold, obtained mostly to keep other non-embargoed countries from profiting from their inventions. In the case of fructose sugar cane, Cuba hopes its patent position will give it a commercial edge when it reaches the world market.

Enriquez said he's ready to plant his experiments outdoors — but getting such permission from Cuban regulators is a lengthy process and the fructose sugar cane is years away from supermarket shelves.

Enriquez's mission is about more than economics. National pride is at stake. Sugar is still the country's No. 1 export, ahead of nickel and even tobacco, although tourism has replaced sugar as the biggest source of hard currency. The sugar industry employs about 400,000 workers.

"This country is very sentimental about sugar," Enriquez said.

Closer to attaining the open field is sugar cane genetically modified to make it more pest resistant. About a dozen of these plants are growing in a greenhouse behind the Havana biotech center, promising to reduce growing expenses by requiring less pesticide.

Others at the center are tinkering with sugar cane's genome to make it more resistant to weed killers and disease. Labrada also talks about using sugar cane to fuel electric generators, as a source of ethanol and even as a source for cancer-fighting drugs.

But even if the Cuban scientists succeed with their biotechnology projects — Enriquez for one says he's close — they have other hurdles to clear. The European Union (news - web sites), the biggest market currently open to Cuba, has temporarily banned all new imports of genetically modified foods in the face of consumer resistance.

Even in the United States, which Cuba can't do business with because of a 40-year-old U.S.-enforced trade embargo, whether consumers will accept genetically modified sugar remains an open question.

An increasing number of U.S. acres are being planted with engineered crops and 80 percent of the country's soy and one-third of its corn is modified. But public resistance is cropping up, especially with sugar.

The Food and Drug Administration has approved a genetically engineered sugar beet for market. But U.S. farmers have shunned them after major sugar refiners announced they wouldn't buy them.

There's growing international concern about the health consequences of genetically modified food. No illness has ever been attributed to eating modified food — but no long-term health studies have been done either.

"They've really put a lot of scientific effort into reducing fertilizers and pesticides," said Doreen Stravlinsky of Greenpeace, which opposes most biotechnology. "But there are so many unknown impacts of genetically modified organisms."

Stravlinsky said Cuba — and other developing nations where farmers are thinking about using biotechnology — should look at other, natural ways to improve their crop yields.

"Genetic engineering is expensive and American companies own most of the patents," Stravlinsky said. "Biotechnology is no silver bullet."

Cuba Marks Year of Direct US Food Sales

By Andrea Rodriguez, Associated Press Writer.

HAVANA - Cuban officials told American agricultural representatives Monday they hope to buy more of their products next year as they launched two days of meetings marking a year of direct U.S. food sales to the communist-run island.

"This has been achieved with the high efficiency of U.S. businesses," Pedro Alvarez, head of Cuba's food import concern Alimport, told about two dozen representatives of American companies during a meeting at a local hotel.

Alvarez also called for two-way trade between the nations, and for an end to restrictions on American travel to Cuba — changes that would require action by the U.S. Congress.

Among companies represented at Monday's meeting were agribusiness giants Cargill Inc., of Minnetonka, Minn., and Archer Daniels Midland, of Decatur, Ill., as well as Marsh Supermarkets of Indiana.

Cuban officials for a year refused to buy "a single grain of rice" under a 2000 U.S. law that allowed the American food sales as an exception to the four-decade-old embargo against Cuba. Havana especially resented the law's restriction on American financing for the deals.

But after Hurricane Michelle caused widespread damage to the island in November 2001 and the U.S. government offered humanitarian assistance, Havana politely rejected the aid but said it would take advantage of the law and buy American food to replenish its reserves.

The first contract was signed on Dec. 16, 2001, and since then Cuba has contracted to buy more than $200 million in American food.

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