The History of Cuba, vol. 5

by Willis Fletcher Johnson

The Bureau of Plant Sanitation is under the direction of Dr. Johnson, a highly trained and energetic official who has devoted the greater part of his life to the study of plant enemies and to the successful elimination of the danger and loss that come from them.

CHAPTER XV
SUGAR

CONSIDERED from the point of view of agriculture, manufactures or commerce, Cane is King in Cuba. The sugar crop of 1918, amounting to 25,346,000 bags, or 3,620,857 tons, was sold for over $350,000,000; and the crop of 1919, consisting of 27,769,662 bags, equivalent to 3,967,094 tons, will probably realize the sum of $500,000,000. The significance of these facts may be strikingly appreciated by making a simple comparison. The Cuban sugar crop of 1919 is worth $200 for every man, woman and child on the island; while the corn crop of the United States, the most valuable crop of that country, worth $3,000,000,000, is equal to only $30 per capita of the population.

The production and consumption of sugar throughout the world was practically doubled during the fifteen years preceding the world war. The total production for 1914 was 18,697,331 tons, of which 8,875,918 tons came from beets, and 9,821,413 tons from cane. As a consequence of the war, the world production for 1919 was only 16,354,580 tons, of which only 4,339,856 tons were obtained from beets, while 12,014,724 tons were obtained from cane. The crop of 1919 shows, therefore, a gross shortage of 2,342,751 tons compared with that of 1914, without taking into account the normal increase in consumption indicated by the experience of the fifteen years before the war; during which period the production of cane sugar in Cuba was actually trebled in volume, showing an average annual increase of approximately 125,000 tons. The production of sugar in Cuba in 1914 was 2,597,732 tons, and in 1919 it was 3,967,064 tons; showing an average annual increase of about 275,000 tons, or approximately seven per cent. These figures, taken with those of the fifteen preceding years, indicate that the development of the cane sugar business in Cuba during the past twenty years, or since the establishment of the Republic, has been of steady growth and healthy proportions.

Natural conditions have greatly favored the growing of sugar cane in Cuba, and the demand for sugar throughout the world has increased so rapidly that it is not surprising that this industry has become paramount in the insular Republic. Begun on a small scale and in almost indescribably primitive fashion nearly four hundred years ago, as related in the first volume of the History of Cuba, it was not until near the end of the sixteenth century that the industry was established on a secure foundation. Even then it received little encouragement from the Spanish Government, and it was not until the close of the eighteenth and opening of the nineteenth century that it began to assume the proportions for which nature had afforded opportunity. With the emancipation of the island from peninsular rule, however, and the firm establishment of a government of Cuba by Cubans and for Cubans, the sugar industry has developed into proportionately one of the greatest in the world.

A general impression prevails that practically all of the lands in Cuba are adapted to the profitable cultivation of sugar cane; that numerous large and desirably located tracts, suitable in character and sufficient in area to justify the installation of modern “centrales” or factories of normal average capacity, are still to be found, scattered throughout the island and purchasable at nominal cost when compared with their economic value; and that the annual production of sugar in Cuba can, therefore, be profitably increased to the extent even of “supplying the whole world with all the sugar it needs.” This impression is, however, erroneous and misleading. General James H. Wilson, commanding the Military Department of Matanzas and Santa Clara under the first Government of Intervention, who was esteemed an authority on the subject, reported in 1899 that it was a mistake to suppose that all Cuban lands were of the first quality, such as would grow sugar cane continuously for twenty or thirty years without replanting; that there were in fact few such estates in Cuba; that most of the land, whether red or black soil, produces cane for only twelve or fifteen years, and much of it for from three to five years only; and that, in the two provinces named, there was then little new or virgin cane land left, nearly all of first class quality having at some time been under cultivation. In this report he did not, however, take into account the extensive areas of “cienaga” or swamp lands, which would not be available for cane growing purposes until drained. Since then it has also been satisfactorily demonstrated that some of the so-called “savana” land, which has a “mulatto” or yellow soil, hitherto regarded as worthless for sugar-producing purposes, can be made to produce good crops of cane by the judicious application of fertilizers and with suitable methods of cultivation. Sufficient time has not elapsed to determine the durability of such plantations.

More conservative opinions, entitled to serious and careful consideration, have been expressed to the effect that first class new and virgin cane lands, favorably located and now available, can still be purchased in Cuba at figures as low as twenty dollars an acre and in sufficient area to make possible the profitable production of 3,000,000 tons of sugar above the present output, which approximates 4,000,000 tons; increasing the total to 7,000,000. It does not seem that such great areas could easily be hidden under a bushel in as small an island as Cuba, and it is probable that not more than one half of the total area of the new lands, purchasable at such a price, would be suitable for cane-growing purposes; in which case the cost would be raised to approximately forty dollars an acre for the actual cane-producing area. If these opinions and claims are accepted, it would seem unreasonable to expect that such large areas of land, yet remaining and now available, could average as good or prove as economically productive as the lands now actually under cultivation; and it would not, therefore, seem unreasonable to assume that to produce 3,000,000 additional tons of sugar would require an area nearly if not quite as large as that now required to produce the present annual output of approximately 4,000,000 tons. It is certainly difficult to believe that the area of land now producing sugar could be duplicated from the new and virgin lands now available in Cuba. The recent purchase of considerable acreages along the line of the newly constructed Northern Railway by the American Sugar Refining Company and the Czarnikow-Rionda interests, at prices ranging from seven hundred and fifty to one thousand dollars a caballeria, or about seventy five dollars an acre, for the actual cane-growing and sugar-producing area, would seem to emphasize the conclusion that first class new and virgin cane lands, yet remaining and now available in Cuba, are not so plentiful or so cheap as claimed by some and generally supposed.

The total area of Cuba is estimated at a maximum of about 30,000,000 acres; and it is probable that not more than ten per cent of this total area, or 3,000,000 acres, is adapted to and now available for the profitable cultivation of sugar cane, with sugar at even relatively normal pre-war average prices. Indeed it is doubtful if even continuance of the present abnormally high prices for sugar could greatly enlarge such now available area. Large tracts of the richest lands in Cuba, favorably conditioned and advantageously located but now covered by “cienagas” or swamps, can however be effectively and economically drained and made available for the cultivation of sugar cane; and such lands when drained should produce sugar more economically and profitably than any similar area of land in the island now growing cane. The largest of these swamps are in the Cauto River valley, in the vicinity of the Bay of Cardenas, and along the line of the Roque Canal leading thereto, and in the region covered by the Cienaga de Zapata. The reclaimable area of these swamp lands is estimated at not less than 750,000 acres.

Putting the present average annual production of cane in Cuba at 20 long tons, and the average yield of sugar at 11.25 per cent, or 2.25 tons an acre, and assuming a gross yearly production of 4,000,000 tons of sugar, indicates that about 35,000,000 tons of cane are grown upon approximately 1,750,000 acres of land; and allowing an additional 500,000 acres, to provide for and cover planting, replanting as pasturage, it would seem that approximately 2,250,000 acres of the best conditioned and most favorably located cane lands now available are required to produce the present output of 4,000,000 tons. Careful consideration of the subject leads to the conclusion that there are not now available in the island over 500,000 acres of new and virgin lands, upon which cane can be planted and profitably grown, with sugar at prices approximating the pre-war ten-year average. But these additional lands cannot reasonably be expected to average as good or prove as economically productive as the lands now actually planted with and growing cane. It should not be unreasonable to allow, for planting, replanting and pasturage, the additional 250,000 acres required to complete the estimated 3,000,000 acres given as the probable maximum area adapted to, and now available for, the profitable cultivation of cane in Cuba; unless and until the swamp lands, having an area of about 750,000 acres, shall be drained, reclaimed and put under cultivation. Assuming that the additional 500,000 acres of land now available would yield in the same proportion as the lands now planted and producing, an increase of only 1,125,000 tons of sugar yearly would result, which would raise the total annual production to about 5,125,000 tons. Should the swamp lands be reclaimed and made productive, upon the same basis of calculation there would be a further increase of only 1,687,500 tons, bringing the total production of sugar in Cuba up to a maximum of only 6,812,500 tons a year, or at most, in round figures, about 7,000,000 tons. It seems most improbable that a larger production could be developed and permanently maintained, unless through fertilization and improved methods of cultivation, including irrigation; and it appears doubtful if such measures would more than compensate for the natural deterioration of soil and exhaustion of lands, that will inevitably result from long continued cultivation; for much of the lands now under cultivation will not produce for periods longer than from three to seven or at most ten years.

The Cienaga de Zapata is the largest and most easily drainable of the swamp areas mentioned. It is a vast alluvial plain, built up of the washings of the most fertile and durable cane growing lands of Cuba, enriched by the decomposition of the vegetable growth of uncounted centuries. It has a total area of 15,307 caballerias, or 505,154 acres; which is greater than the sugar-producing area of the Island of Porto Rico, or that of the Hawaiian Islands; indeed it is nearly as large as both combined. The net reclaimable area is not less than 450,000 acres; which is sufficient to provide cane for thirty “centrales” of 250,000 bags, or fifteen of 500,000 bags capacity each; equivalent to an output of 7,500,000 bags, or approximately 1,000,000 tons of sugar a year; the production of which would be effected under a combination of advantageous economic conditions not found in the production of sugar elsewhere in Cuba, if in the world. Chief among these advantageous conditions are the fertility of the soil, the extent and compactness of the area of land, its convenient and economical accessibility to a deep water port, and the fact that the entire area can be irrigated with water from the drainage canals at a maximum lift of not over ten feet. The drainage of these lands can be effected entirely by gravity and at a cost not exceeding twenty dollars per acre for the net sugar producing area. Comprehensive surveys have been made for effecting the drainage of this great territory by well known American engineers; and a plan providing for the utilization of the lands, when drained, has been prepared by Mr. R. G. Ward of New York City, who was one of the chief factors under Sir William Van Home in the building and putting into successful operation of the original main line of the Cuba Railroad, extending from Santa Clara to Santiago. Under the franchises or concessions controlled by Mr. Ward, the not distant future may, therefore, see the present output of sugar in Cuba increased by approximately one-fourth, from the now neglected lands of the Cienaga de Zapata.