“We cannot continue doing the same when times have changed and life is telling us that we have to go to other concepts,” Diaz-Canel told the participants of a workshop in which directors, industrial technicians and sugar cane producers participated.

Around 480 thousand tons of sugar were produced, with 36 plants having milled just over six million tons of cane during the 2021-2022 harvest, the lowest production in over a hundred years.

According to the local press, “Agribusiness is starting a new management model, in which the exclusive production of sugar is not the center of all calculations, strategies, efforts, and even the source of the main income.”

The seminar, which brought together more than a hundred specialists, was dedicated to analyzing the main problems and challenges in the sector. It was also attended by academics, scientists and other experts linked to the field.

For Diaz-Canel, the sugar agribusiness has “a mass of committed workers (…), with a sense of belonging, who are confident that the sector can still recover, and this is something that is in our hands, with everyone seeking that recovery”.

At the meeting, about twenty managers, specialists, experts and scientists explained the work they do in their fields, and spoke of difficulties, limitations, and also the results, while they pondered the potential of the sector, which, as the Cuban president said, “if we know how to take advantage of them, we will go to a different moment in the production of sugar cane and its derivatives.”

pgh/llp/mem/evm