[NYTr] Winter Spuds Growing Season Began in Cuba
 
Date: Fri, 14 Dec 2007 16:50:02 -0600 (CST)

Via NY Transfer News Collective  *  All the News that Doesn't Fit
 
Agencia Cubana de Noticias (ACN)
http://ainch.ain.cu/mailman/listinfo/ingles

Winter Spuds Growing Season Began in Cuba

Havana, Dec 14 (acn) The first 2,000 hectares of spuds have been seeded 
from Pinar del Rio to Ciego de Avila provinces, including the Isla de 
la Juventud municipality. The rest of a total of 10,000 planned should 
be seeded by year end or early January, 2008.

The potato, which was first cultivated at high attitudes in the Andes 
Mountains, is not a tropical crop. Nonetheless, the skill and 
experience of Cuban farmers has made it possible for the popular tuber 
to grow in the island's warm climate with a very mild winter.

Work is intense to make up lost ground because of intermittent rains 
that delayed soil preparation, reported Granma newspaper. Once in the 
ground, farmers will wait and see how the climate behaves in the first 
months of the new year.

The 2006-7 planting was severely affected by excessively warm 
temperatures last winter, which were above the norm of 18 degrees 
Celsius minimum at nighttime. Thus the resulting 2007 harvest was one 
of the lowest in recent years.

To counteract the heat, more electric irrigation equipment has been 
assigned to the provinces with the largest quantity of potatoes and 
based on the climate in each given zone.
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