Las Tunas, Cuba.- The territorial delegate of the Ministry of Agriculture, Omar Yoel Perez Lopez, said that the intention is that producers have on their farms one, two and even three yokes of oxen for use, especially in livestock and various crops. Regarding the harvest, collection and agricultural distribution, he said that "the fundamental task is to get them to collect with their own carts and oxen the goods and take them to the point of purchase of the cooperative or direct to the nearest storage center.

His statements leave no doubt that animal traction has a greater role to play in agriculture.

SYNONYMOUS WITH BACKWARDNESS?

Experts from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) say that the use of animal traction is valid in small-scale agriculture. Among the points in favor, they stress that animals are available in localities and are affordable; the basis for their maintenance comes from farm products and neighboring pastures, and the work they do complements and partially replaces human effort for very heavy work. They also think that these cattle or horses transform the crop residues in a productive and efficient way, and provide organic fertilizer in the form of manure that reinforces the fertility of the soil.

Likewise, they say that their use creates employment opportunities not only for those who directly intervene in their practice and care, but for those who exercise specialized work in animal timing and teach them work routines, or for artisans who work in the manufacture and maintenance of equipment and tools.

In Cuba, as in the rest of the Third World nations, oxen and horse-drawn carts in plains and mountains have been part of the rural scenes practically since the beginning of European colonization.

Only the revolutionary triumph brought an explosive increase in agricultural mechanization in a clear reflection of the purpose of humanizing such labors. In fact, statistics indicate that from 1970 to 1990 the number of tractors was multiplied by 10, while the number of oxen used in agricultural work was reduced to about 163,000.

This trend was reversed with the acute shortage of fuel, spare parts and other inputs that the country suffered from the disappearance of the Soviet Union. The government's strategy to confront the crisis resumed the use of oxen and other animals in agriculture, to the point that in the mid-1990s the total tractional capacity of mobile energy means in Cuban fields was distributed almost equally between tractors and work animals.

The economic point of view is contributed by a group of professors of the Agrarian University of Havana, who contrasted the economic, energetic and exploitation expenses of a tractor YUMZ-6M and a team of oxen in the work of cultivation of the bean, tomato, and potato. The researchers concluded that the productivity of the tractor-cultivator was at least 300 percent higher than that of the cultivator-yoke.

They also determined that even in its most inefficient use on five hectares to perform a task equivalent to that achieved by that tractor, the process would require a minimum of five cultivator-yokes and a working time of five hours. Nevertheless, they clarified that "the calculations of the efficiency of the oxen team, based on the energy used for the work in relation to the food supplied for the cultivation of beans, tomatoes and potatoes are 22, 40 and 38 percent, respectively, which means that the team has a considerable energy reserve.

From the soil, Jorge Carmenate Pérez, president of the Alianza Obrero Campesina Agricultural Production Cooperative (CPA), affirms that in a special way concerning soil preparation, machinery will always be essential; although he does not deny the value of oxen in other tasks related to cultivation and, above all, transport over short distances.

STRIKING A BALANCE

In recent weeks, experts from the Agricultural Mechanization Research Institute (IMA) pondered a group of measures taken to adapt agricultural production to the use of animal traction. At that time, smaller production units were established, friendlier to the use of low-consumption technologies such as animal traction.

In the heat of that time, which is much harder than now, they warned that in different cases "tractors are used to carry out certain tasks in which animal traction may be more economical or convenient". In relation to this matter, they indicated that, in all the typical actions of the agricultural activity, the use of animal traction was at least possible, although they cataloged it as more recommendable in the furrowing, weeding and transport.

They concluded that "animal traction, mechanized traction and manual labor generate productive technologies that are not mutually exclusive but should always be considered complementary. The selection of one variant or another," they suggested, "depends on many factors, among which cost must always predominate, although sometimes there are other strategies that determine this, such as fuel-saving policies or the use of soil conservation technologies.

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