Wednesday 13 September 2017

Damages to Cuban agriculture from Hurrican Irma

Hurricane Irma: Severe damages to Cuban agriculture

12 September, 2017,

HAVANA, Cuba, Sep 12 (ACN) Although the figures are preliminary, the Ministry of Agriculture (Minagri) reported that Hurricane Irma, after passing through the national territory, caused severe damage to livestock facilities, windmills, crops and livestock.
Fernando Velazco Betancourt, head of the command post of Minagri, told ACN that among the damages are the loss of more than 71 thousand hens, as well as damages in the poultry houses, mainly in the provinces of Camagüey, Villa Clara, Cienfuegos, Ciego de Ávila and Matanzas.
Faced with such a situation, he said that they are working on blanketing the roofs of these facilities and prioritizing the feeding and water of the animals, while the maintenance and repair brigades of the less affected territories were activated.
He also stated that they workshops, feed mills, dairy farms, rearing centers, as well as farming houses, nurseries and stonecutters suffered deterioration.
According to Velazco Betancourt, around five thousand hectares (ha) of vegetables and fruits were damaged; of them 4,188 correspond to banana plantations.
On this last product, he added that everything in optimal state will be distributed to the population and the rest to animal consumption, and work is done to recover those plantations.
In addition, he said that the company of La Cuba, in Ciego de Avila, lost about 1,800 ha of banana plantations and that there are some 900 tons that will be commercialized in town and another part will be destined to the tourism sector in Havana, Camagüey and Varadero.

Regarding tobacco cultivation, the director assured that several seedlings of the companies of Santiago de Cuba, Granma and Holguin showed affectations, as well as factories and warehouses.





After Irma, a Look at Why Cubans are 15 Times Less Likely to Die from Hurricanes Than Americans







Democracy Now!

One of the Caribbean islands hardest hit by Hurricane Irma was Cuba, where 10 people died. Irma hit Cuba’s northern coast as a Category 5 storm. 

It was the deadliest hurricane in Cuba since 2005, when 16 people died in Hurricane Dennis. 

Cuba has long been viewed as a world leader in hurricane preparedness and recovery. 

According to the Center for International Policy, a person is 15 times as likely to be killed by a hurricane in the United States as in Cuba. 

Meanwhile, Cuba has already sent more than 750 health workers to Antigua, Barbuda, Saint Kitts, Nevis, Saint Lucia, the Bahamas, Dominica and Haiti. 

For more, we speak with Elizabeth Newhouse, director of the Center for International Policy’s Cuba Project. She has taken numerous delegations from the U.S. to Cuba to see how the Cubans manage disaster preparedness.







After the Cold War, Cuba faced many of the agricultural challenges that the rest of the world is now anticipating.

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