By Jay Amberg Bloomberg Lifestyles. Cigar News - Bloomberg.com. 26 May 2000, 10:53am EDT
Havana, May 17 -- Tobacco production in Cuba is forecast to increase by about 10,000 tons this year, according to the island's National Association of Small Farmers.
Association members are meeting in Havana this week to discuss how best to expand Cuba's agricultural sector, including the island's annual tobacco crop.
In an interview on Radio Havana, Orlando Font said despite a winter-spring drought that has hit large areas of the country, he expects a good tobacco crop in 2000-2001.
Font said recent increases in tobacco production (both cigar and cigarette) have been due to the extension of the tobacco plantings to all of Cuba's provinces and record crops in Cuba's traditional tobacco growing regions like western Pinar del Rio, Havana, Sancti Spiritus and Villa Clara.
Cuba's Ministry of Agriculture hasn't released official figures on the tonnage of this year's harvest or its projections for next year.
The 1999-2000 cigar tobacco crop was harvested in February and March. Indications are that this crop was exceptional compared with the previous year when the crop was reduced by an outbreak of blue mold.
Cuba's climate is fairly uniform. May through November is considered the rainy season with December through April the dry months. Traditionally, Cuban tobacco farmers plow under their fields at the end of summer and prepare the soil for planting in the fall.
From seed to small tobacco plants takes about 45 days. After the small plants are transferred to the fields, it takes another 50 days for the plants to reach maturity. It's during this period that the plants are most susceptible to contracting blue mold.
Blue mold is a fungus that attacks tobacco plants by destroying the leaves. The fungus is the bane of tobacco farmers in the U.S., Cuba, Mexico and Central America.
In an attempt to minimize the damage from blue mold, Cuban agricultural experts at the Tobacco Research Institute have developed new hybrid tobacco plants supposedly be less susceptible to the fungus.
One of these hybrids, Habana 2000, is quickly replacing Cuba's Corojo variety of tobacco plant. Another hybrid was Habana- 92, a so-called ``black tobacco'' that's grown in direct sunlight, compared with Habana 2000 that's grown under the protective cover of cloth tenting.
Until recent harvests of Habana 2000, the Corojo, first developed in 1948, was the tobacco plant of choice among Cuban farmers who grow cigar wrapper leaf.
Blue mold outbreaks often occur when the weather is unusually damp, so some Cuban farmers predict if the drier weather persists through next year's cigar leaf harvest, the chances of this disease appearing could be minimized.
While the Habana 2000 hybrid has proved less prone to infection from blue mold, the plant isn't immune.
Cuban tobacco farmers have also said the outbreak of blue mold sometimes follow in the wake of a hurricane and while no one can predict whether a hurricane will strike Cuba this year (hurricane season is June 1-Nov. 31), long-range forecasts seem to indicate a more active season for these
storms.
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