RADIO HABANA CUBA Hello and welcome to Breakthrough, RHC's Science, Technology and the Environment update! I am Arnaldo, Arnie, Coro, this station's science editor, and as always it is my pleasure to share with you the next 5 minutes of on-air time with a topic of interest to our worldwide audience.
BREAKTHROUGH
Report on Science, Technology & the EnvironmentFor broadcast Sunday, April 22 & Thursday, April 26, 2001
Written and narrated by Arnaldo "Arnie" Coro, RHC's Science Editor
Have you ever heard about organic food? Of course your answer, I am sure, will be "YES!" But have you ever heard of organic SUGAR? Yes, ORGANIC SUGAR... Well, if you haven't, then after listening to Breakthrough today, I am sure that you will want to include ORGANIC SUGAR from now on in your shopping list....
Cuba is now producing organic sugar at two sugar factories... one is the small experimental mill of the Universidad Central, where this story started; the other is a rather conventional sugar factory that, after a lot of work, is the nation's first plant certified to produce organic sugar on a large, commercially viable scale. But let's go back to why this project is now a reality...
As you and I are well aware, almost every person aboard spaceship Earth is extremely concerned with what our food contains. Lots of chemicals, and some very harmful ones indeed, are going straight through our daily food, something that must be brought to an end as soon as possible. BUT, the production of so-called organic food, actually what could better be described as certified organic food, is a very complex process, full of very stringent requirements, so that in order to qualify as ORGANIC, sugar produced from the sugar cane plant must meet a long list of carefully written specifications. That's why the sugar cane had to be planted no less than three years earlier, in fields that had been kept clear of the use of any chemical fertilizers or pesticides for a certain period of time. The carefully selected seed itself had to be certified as meeting certain criteria, and from there on the long chain of events that has led to the industrial-scale production of organic sugar in Cuba started.
During this sugar cane harvest season, soon to be coming to an end, the highly valuable organic sugar produced both at the experimental installation, and at the first commercial-scale plant, will be exported to Europe, where a kilogram of Cuba's natural brown organic sugar is in high demand among health-conscious consumers. According to Cuban scientists working on this project, the brown-colored organic sugar has a lot of vitamins and trace elements that will make an important contribution to the daily requirements of any person using this product. Also, the lack of any chemical additives avoids even the most remote possibility of the organic sugar having any allergens, something important for allergic persons.
Cuba's organic sugar production for the 2000 to 2001 harvest is still very limited and doesn't meet the demand, so that's why the Ministry of the Sugar Industry is already planning an increase in the farmlands devoted to sugar cane plantations that meet the organic sugar production criteria. As you may realize, the cost of producing each ton of this ecologically sound sugar is higher than the regular raw brown sugar coming from plantations that make use of chemical fertilizers and very limited amounts of pesticides. But, organic sugar sells at a price that more than compensates the increased production costs, and that's why the upcoming 2001 to 2002 sugarcane harvest will see a significant increase in the production of the nice-looking and delicious-tasting brown organic sugar that so many people in Western Europe have already enjoyed since last year's first production runs.
From Havana, this was another edition of Breakthrough, our station's science, technology and the environment update. I am Arnaldo, "Arnie," Coro, RHC's Science editor, now wishing you excellent reception of our next show.
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