Cuba laments collapse of iconic sugar industry

The men of the Yumuri sugar co-operative in Cuba have worked the cane fields around the city of Cienfuegos since they were old enough to wield a machete.

Cutting cane is all Miguel Guzmán has ever known. He comes from a family of farm hands and started the tough, thankless work as a teenager.

For hundreds of years, sugar was the mainstay of the Cuban economy. It was not just the island’s main export but also the cornerstone of another national industry, rum.

Older Cubans remember when the island was essentially built on the backs of families like Mr Guzmán’s.

Today, though, he readily admits he has never seen the sugar industry as broken and depressed as it is now – not even when the Soviet Union’s lucrative sugar quotas dried up after the Cold War.

Spiralling inflation, shortages of basic goods and the decades-long US economic embargo have made for a dire economic outlook across the board in Cuba. But things are particularly bleak in the sugar trade.

“There’s not enough trucks and the fuel shortages mean sometimes several days pass before we can work,” says Miguel, waiting in a tiny patch of shade for the Soviet-era lorries to arrive.

The lost hours of harvest as men and machinery lie idle have acutely hurt production levels.

Last season, Cuba’s production fell to just 350,000 tonnes of raw sugar, an all-time low for the country, and well below the 1.3 million tonnes recorded in 2019.