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Havana, Cuba. Cuba announced the elimination of its Ministry of Sugar on Thursday in a sign of how far the symbolic crop has fallen since its heyday, when much of the population was mobilized to the countryside at harvest time to help cut cane.

President Raul Castro’s government determined that the ministry “currently serves no state function” and will therefore replace it with an entity called Grupo Empresarial de la Agroindustria Azucarera, the Communist Party newspaper Granma reported.

The goal is to “create a business system capable of turning its exports into hard currency to finance its own expenses,” Granma said.

Like coffee and tobacco, sugar is a highly emblematic crop on this Caribbean island. Cuba used to be a world leader in sugar, annually producing 6 million to 7 million tons.

Former leader Fidel Castro made the annual harvest a point of revolutionary pride and regularly mobilized brigades of Cubans from government officials and urban office workers to artists and ballet dancers to boost output.

In 1968 he famously announced that Cuba would try to harvest 10 million tons of cane that year, mobilizing labor from nearly the entire workforce. That aim proved overly ambitious, though some 8 million tons were harvested.

Later, the collapse of the Soviet Union deprived Cuba of its main buyer, and sugar has since fallen on hard times. It now trails nickel production and tourism as a source of foreign income, contributing about $600 million a year.

Last year, Cuba reported its lowest harvest since 1905 — 1.1 million tons — and fired its sugar minister. Officials have said this year’s harvest is expected to be only slightly higher.

Granma said 13 provincial companies will oversee the 56 sugar processing plants operating this year — down from 156 in the 1970s.

Associated Press