[NYTr] Sugarcane Harvesting Season Began in Cuba

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

Agencia Cubana de Noticias (ACN)
http://ainch.ain.cu/mailman/listinfo/ingles


Sugarcane Harvesting Season Began in Cuba

Havana, Dec 10 (acn) The 2007-8 sugarcane harvesting season began in 
Cuba on Monday, with the start of operations at the Roberto Ramirez 
sugarcane factory in the municipality of Niquero, in eastern Granma 
province.

A total of 52 factories will produce sugar this season, 14 of them 
starting operations in December. Harvesting will last an average of 96 
days, and the largest planned operation is scheduled for 129 days in 
the Urbano Noris factory, in eastern Holguin province.

The Roberto Ramirez factory will run for 90 days, with 68 percent of 
the raw material cut by sugarcane harvesting machines. Next scheduled 
to start up are the Paquito Rosales (Santiago de Cuba), Bartolome Maso 
(Granma) and Panchito Gomez Toro (Villa Clara) factories.

87 percent of the sugarcane will be harvested mechanically, while over 
21,000 workers will do the manual cutting. Hindering factors this 
season are the poor condition of the roads to transport the sugarcane, 
470 kilometers of which were severely damaged by the intense rains 
caused by tropical storm Noel in October.

Intense rains also affected 40 kilometers of railroads and flooded 
57,000 hectares of sugarcane.