The Cuban sugar harvest which was extended almost a month and a half beyond its originally scheduled shutdown date ended here as the last of the islands 154 mills closed operations the official newspaper granma said. The newspaper characterized the harvest which began in late November 1986 as a tense and pressured campaign. In a recent interview with the French communist party newspaper lhumanite Cuban president Fidel Castro said that crude sugar production during the harvest would be less than 7.5 mln tonnes. The harvest was plagued by a four year shortfall of rain which reduced the sugar content of the cane and by unseasonable rain storms during the first two months of this year which made cane cutting by mechanical combines virtually impossible. Many foreign sugar experts voiced doubts during the present harvest that raw sugar production would exceed last years 7.2 mln tonne mark. In the 1984-85 campaign Cuba produced 8.2 mln tonnes of raw sugar.
CUBA SUGAR HARVEST ENDS AFTER LONG DELAYS