BY JOAQUIN ORAMAS

THE restructuring of the Cuban sugar industry - considered a valiant step by Peter Baron, general secretary of the International Sugar Industry -constitutes a 180-degree turnaround, in a sector that has a 400-year tradition and about a half million workers, plus another 1.5 million indirectly linked to the industry.

As has already been reported, this important industry must modernize its facilities by making them more competitive and efficient; reduce production costs by raising agro-industrial yield; and diversify the range of products made from sugarcane. For this reason, it is currently undertaking significant transformations and a new style.

A certain number of its workers will move on to other promising activities without taking a cut in salary, after inefficient sugar mills are shut down or converted to the production of sugarcane by-products, while a percentage of the two million hectares that have been used for growing sugarcane will be turned over to livestock breeding, various crops and reforestation. At the same time, Cuba will continue to produce sugar, with annual production at around four million tons.

There are unquestionable truths which have motivated this important transformation.

Around three decades ago, the island was the world's principal sugar exporter, producing almost seven million tons annually. By virtue of an accord establishing preferential prices, the bulk of this exported sugar went to the Soviet Union.

After the collapse of the USSR and the rest of the Eastern European socialist bloc, Cuban sugar production decreased considerably, and sales abroad were based on international market prices which have continually dropped. Consequently, the Cuban state felt obliged to subsidize what had always been its number one industry.

Cuba isn't the only country affected by the fall of sugar prices. Other countries are also suffering, and their workers are not relocated to other productive sectors or trained in new skilled while maintaining their salaries.

The Philippines are a good example. From the early 1900s through the 1970s, it exported all its sugar to the United States, through an accord similar to the one between Cuba and the former Soviet Union. But by the 1980s everything had changed, when large U.S. soft drink companies, the same companies that used to consume a fourth of all the world's sugar, replaced cane sugar with other sweeteners.

And what happened to the majority of the 353,000 Filipino sugar workers? Many were fired, family incomes fell and malnutrition spread throughout the population. The average life span of a cane cutter is just 30 years.

Today, sugar production in the Philippines is limited to Negros island, 90% of whose population depends on this industry. The land is in the hands of large companies and the reduction of sugar consumption in United States has had tragic effects on cane plantations.

In the Dominican Republic, where 12% of all arable land is dedicated to sugar cane, the cane cutters' situation is deplorable, particularly for the Haitian immigrant workers whose labor conditions approach those of slavery.

In Mexico, purchases of fructose syrup from the United States have practically eliminated local suppliers to industries making beverages and other products.

TWO OPPOSING PHENOMENA

In the last few years, the world sugar market has been faced with two opposing phenomena. On one hand we have the incursion by European sugar as a result of protectionism; and on the other hand, the decrease in internal sugar consumption by the great consumer nations, where cane sugar has been replaced with other sweeteners, causing a drop in demand on the world market. As a result of excess production, sugar prices have fallen dramatically.

The fall in the value of sugar on the world market, as a result of the policy of dumping, is calculated at 12% since European surpluses have been sold at low prices on the international market.

The countries of the South, the greatest producers of sugarcane, are precisely the most affected, obliging them to look for new alternatives for the industry.

Cuba has been diversifying its sugar industry, for which it has both experience and the basic infrastructure. Its human resources, which will soon be the most valuable world product, have good technical skills.

Even though world sugar production is experiencing light growth, standing nowadays at 130.6 million tons a year, only 25% of this volume reaches the world market, and the rich countries are the largest purchasers. Of course, if the planet's six billion inhabitants all had equal access to the world sugar market, current production would fall far short of demand.

What will happen in 2050, when according to calculations 10 billion people will inhabit the earth and food production will have been constantly reduced due to the selfish trade policies of the most powerful nations? One will have to say, as did my grandparents: "God have mercy on us."

Taken from Granma Digital March/2003