Cuba rethinks rice imports due to soaring costs

By Marc Frank

HAVANA (Reuters) - Cuba has begun clearing sickle bush from thousands of hectares of rice land as soaring prices force it to reconsider importing hundreds of thousands of tonnes of the population's main staple, local media reported.

"The Ruta Invasora rice farm is working to recover a large part of its land largely covered with Marabu (sickle bush) and other brush," Camaguey province's weekly Communist party newspaper reported.

Before the collapse of former-benefactor the Soviet Union, Cuba's nine provincial rice farms, covering 150,000 hectares, produced up to 260,000 tonnes of consumable rice.

Decapitalization, plague and drought followed.

Last year the farms produced around 70,000 tonnes while dry-land rice farms at the municipal level and private producers added another 150,000 tonnes to output.

In recent years, Cuba has imported more than 500,000 tonnes of rice annually, mainly from Vietnam.

"The price of a tonne of rice has gone from $223 in 2002 to $855 this year," Igor Montero, the vice president of state-food importer Alimport, said this week on national television.

The price and availability of rice is a politically volatile issue in Cuba, with the government subsidizing the cost through a ration system.