Three companies want to accelerate the curing of the leaf with solar heaters to increase production
14ymedio, Juan Izquierdo, Havana, 31 July 2024 — Sancti Spíritus has initiated a series of tobacco “experiments” that violate the golden rule of the cigar: never produce it in mass. The idea – supported by an “unpublished investment” of the monopoly Habanos S.A. – is to enhance the controlled curing of the leaf, a euphemism that hides accelerated production by artificial means.
The curing process, which normally requires between 45 and 55 days, will now take only one month. Three producers from the municipality of Cabaiguán – the tobacco-growing territory par excellence in the center of the country – are the “pioneers” of the new process, which aims, even if the official press does not mention it, to remedy the terrible results obtained by the province last year, the worst in its productive history. Only one-sixth of the tobacco that was harvested was good enough for export.
Now, and against the basic rules of a crop where there are no short cuts to achieve excellence, the province wants a quick curing of the leaf for more cigars and better quality. The “new project” has solar heaters to accelerate the drying, which Escambray celebrates because Habanos S.A. also paid for them as a strategy to “reduce the consumption of electricity and fossil fuel.”
The province’s Communist Party newspaper admits that the investment still has no “use value”
The first signs of failure are already there: the province’s Communist Party newspaper admits that – although
