Usa Forum - Cuban Coffee Harvest Gets Underway

NY.Transfer.News

8/22/2006 9:46:00 PM

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Cuban Coffee Harvest Gets Underway

Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit

[No URLs are available yet on the following article. Walter Lippmann
obtained it from the Cuba-L list run by Nelson Valdes, a paid-subscription
list. This article and the previous one on the cirtus harvest are either in
the hopper and haven't been released yet, or else they are only available to
paid subscribers to Reuters Business/Commodities news. They may eventually
show up in the UK Financial Times, which publishes Frank's work for Reuters.
- -NY Transfer]

Reuters - Aug 21, 2006

Cuba upbeat as coffee harvest gets underway

By Marc Frank

HAVANA, Aug 21 (Reuters) - Cuba is optimistic that better weather,
improved organization and higher prices will bring a recovery in
coffee production from last season's record-low crop, industry
sources and local media said at the weekend.

Coffee picking is gradually getting underway in Cuba's eastern
mountains, where 85 percent of the crop is grown.

A rare July hurricane, Dennis, passed near coffee growing areas on
the eastern part of Cuba last year, then slammed into the rest of the
ripening beans in central Cuba, leaving output estimated by Reuters
at 140,000 60-kg bags, 25 percent less than the previous harvest.

Cuba's Agriculture Ministry regularly refuses comment on the harvest,
and the government and state-run media do not report the total crop,
though provincial information is more frequently available. Reuters
estimates output based on local media and source reports.

Above average rainfall this year has broken a three-year drought in
eastern and central Cuba and the area to date has been spared
hurricane damage.

"If there isn't a hurricane again this year, we are going to harvest
coffee for real," a farmer in the mountains near Santiago de Cuba
said in a telephone interview.

"We have had perfect weather, a lot of rain but not too much. I'm
going to pick three times what I did last year," he said, asking not
to be named.

There was similar optimism in Guantanamo province, last year's top
producer, accounting for 70 percent of 2005 exports.

"What may help the harvest most is the substantial increase in coffee
prices, which allows us to increase what we pay for beans," state-run
radio quoted a local coffee official saying.

Communist Cuba's growers, in exchange for low-interest government
credits and subsidized supplies, must sell all of their coffee to the
state at prices well below what the beans fetch on the black market.

Local analysts said the system led to low production and the
diversion of 10 to 20 percent of the crop.

Eastern Granma province's official weekly, La Demajagua, reported
improved weather, the repair of roads and processing facilities, and
an increase in inputs meant there would be a significant expansion in
output.

"The flowering and development of the fruit ensures an increase in
volume compared with the previous harvest," the paper quoted the
province's head of mountain production, Raul Brizuela, as stating.

The best beans, mainly for export to Japan, are grown in central
Cuba, where harvesting begins later and no information was available.

Picking begins in August and ends in March, though most beans are
harvested from October into January.

Through 2000 Cuba earned around $20 million annually from coffee
exports, but in recent years low prices and declining production have
cut export revenues by around 75 percent, according to government
export data.

Cuba imports lesser quality coffee mainly from Vietnam to meet
domestic demand.

*
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Cuban Coffee Harvest Gets Underway

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