Sunday, November 21, 2010

The Mandarins Now Come to Cuba By Boat

You would think that oranges on most citrus-friendly Caribbean islands would be a common, locally grown, readily-available fruit.  Well, not if that island is Cuba, as Cuban blogger Yoani Sanchez explains here in a post titled "The Mandarins Come by Boat." 

4 Comments:

At 11/21/2010 1:29 PM, Blogger juandos said...

Well 'if' this Havana Journal is factual this relatively recent headline of their's makes oranges look like the least of their problems: Cuba to close 100 farms, importing 80% of food now

State run newspaper Granma reported that Cuba will close at least one hundred “inefficient” government run farms and move approximately 40,000 government workers to other jobs.

Agriculture Minister Ulises Rosales made the announcement at a meeting of the National Association of Small Farmers in Santa Clara Villa Clara.

He claimed that the farms are unsustainable in the current economy.

Cuba imports about eighty percent of the food consumed by its eleven million people at an annual cost of several billion dollars...

 
At 11/21/2010 1:33 PM, Blogger juandos said...

Now this would be seriously bad news for me if I were a Cuban: Will Weissert from AP is reporting that Cuba had its worst coffee harvest in history in 2009 with production yielding only 5,500 tons. Pretty sad considering how much farm land there is in Cuba. Let’s not forget that the Communist government produced the lowest sugar harvest since 1905 last year...

 
At 11/22/2010 11:13 AM, Blogger Rand said...

When the economy of Cuba collapses, they will apply to 0bama for a bailout.

 
At 11/22/2010 1:41 PM, Blogger Methinks said...

No surprise. The Ukraine was the breadbasket of Europe. Then, the Soviets got their hands on agriculture.

A handful of "economic plans" later, by 1964, the Soviet Union was importing the majority of its food.

 

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