$5 billion

Here’s a roundup of reports on damages from Gustav and Ike. The blow to food supply is particularly severe: crops lost in the field, stocks damaged in warehouses, and Cuba’s capacity to import affected by losses in sectors that generate foreign exchange earnings. It’s not yet clear how foreign assistance will measure up to this challenge, or how long it will take for farm production to return to normal. Beans cost 20 pesos per pound in farmers markets, more than double the norm, according to a report Rui Ferreira has from Havana.

• Cuba’s preliminary estimate of total damage: $5 billion (AFP).

• Cuban housing officials now say 514,875 housing units were damaged, of which 91,254 were destroyed completely.

• Reuters: 740,000 acres of cane are flattened or under water; that’s 91 percent of the acreage harvested last year.

• Agriculture ministry officials said last week that 700,000 tons of food was lost (including an amount of pork equal to eight percent of last year’s production), with heavy damage to plantains (80 percent of Holguin’s production lost), tubers, poultry, livestock, and more (El Nuevo Herald, La Jornada). More here from Reuters here, on coffee and tobacco, and on citrus here.

• Cuba’s minister of “comercio interior” says Ike damaged 4,000 tons of stored food by blowing the roofs off of warehouses; this is on top of 1,300 tons damaged by Gustav.

• On the aid front, shipments arrived from Brazil and Ecuador; Spain is pressing the EU to approve funding for relief and development projects in Cuba, Haiti, and Jamaica; and the UN has offered $3.5 million in aid.

• Juventud Rebelde’s hurricane coverage, with photo galleries.

• Situation reports: from the Pan American Health Organization, and from the UN office in Cuba (pdf).