The low sugarcane yields continue to characterize a good part of the agricultural entities in the province. Although we are not among the territories with the worst results in this indicator, what has been achieved is not to satisfy us, but rather to transform the current panorama.
In the previous campaign, 45 tons per hectare were reached as a general average, a figure that conclusively demonstrates how much we still have to do in a territory that in previous moments reached double this figure.
There are entities that barely reached 32 tons despite being excellent connoisseurs of this crop that they plant on their land as the main economic line.
The issue has been widely debated in the meetings of the Vice President of the Republic, Salvador Valdés Mesa, with the sugarcane growers of Mayabeque.
In order to carry out more efficient and productive harvests, it is necessary to have greater volumes of raw material, a task that receives the maximum attention from the country’s management, which is why sugar represents in our exports.
There are several factors that affect current sugarcane yields: bad seed, poor soil preparation, lack of cultural attention, lack of inputs.
These are some of the ills that afflict the fields where the plant that is more adapted to the characteristics of our soils grows that, according to the experts, it seems that it emerged here.
In his essay on the cultivation of sugar cane, written in 1840 by Don Álvaro Reynoso, the wise man from Alcázar ruled that the sugar plant is located in the sugar cane clump.
“The clusters that come from good seed do better, and in due course grow lusher, resist more strongly the action of droughts and other adverse circumstances,” he points out in his book.
He directed giving priority to the preparation of the land and ensuring the amount of seed necessary to sow a given area of ??land.
He reaffirmed in this sense that the choice of the seed is a prominent point; the immediate and future fate of the cane plantation depends on their circumstances.
“Sugarcane is an irrigated plant, he declared, and then the freshness of the land is necessary to carry out a good sowing?. Today, that the agricultural entities of Azcuba install modern irrigation equipment, the yields per hectare are called to multiply, as the Vice President of the Republic requested.
Reynoso states in his essay, with full force, that the best crops are from September to December, the so-called cold season.
But it goes further in the details: he called for agro-ecological studies of the land before any agricultural operation, keep the fields free of weeds, use good drainage, respect the distance between the rows and between the plants, make a timely application of the fertilizers.
Don Álvaro Reynoso still has a lot to do among the sugarcane growers to together take care of an industry with centuries of history, traditions, present and future in the economy of a nation that needs it.
