More than three months after the implementation of the Ordering Task, which in its prices and tariffs section hit agriculture strongly, together with great limitations and severe economic blows, a new window towards agricultural development opens with the 63 measures approved by the Cuban Government to boost food production.
Las Tunas, Cuba.- A training process is being carried out throughout the country, involving the highest authorities and provincial authorities as well as individual farmers, to explain this package of opportunities. Meetings, in which ideas to change the agricultural production image are detailed, open up new paths, and speed up their implementation as much as possible.
Manuel Santiago Sobrino Martínez, Minister of the Food Industry, urged here to carry out the commercialization and contracts without intermediaries, directly with the producer, during the first appointment held in Las Tunas to comment on these proposals.
The importance of the contract with the farmer is among the most outstanding issues, a document that totally lacked a legal body and that has been a victim of irregularities and non-compliance by all parties. Well, now or never has come. Something as sacred as producing food, and its sale, needs control and planning. If it is a fair agreement, the peasant will be motivated to honor the state commission and, then, be able to sell the over compliance.
Thus, each disposition carries with the transformation and the stimulation of production. However, introducing them will never be an act of magic, nor should be left to improvisation; discipline, rigor, and constant monitoring are required.
Another issue seeks to resolve the repeated difficulty in defaults, a topic discussed in the initial training, also chaired by Vladimir Regueira Ale, the first deputy minister of Finance and Prices. “Today, it is necessary to contract with financial support; this way we avoid non-payment from the very moment the contract is being signed. Everyone knows what they have to sell, according to their ability to pay for it.”
Other benefits with legal support are added, such as the reduction of electricity and hydraulic services rates, the lessening of aviation costs for rice crops, inputs, feed, procedures; as well as improvements in the payment of various agricultural lines, besides direct trade with stores that operate in freely convertible currency (MLC). No less important is facilitating access to two entities with a high incidence in the agricultural activity: the Bank and the State Insurance.
In all these readjustments, much remains to be done in terms of prices, intermediaries, bureaucracy to access loans, insurance neglect, stabilizing the workforce, improving life in the communities, the quality of products, and the commercial edge, regardless of the new facilities in this mechanism.
During May, the exchanges will be extended to the productive bases, to turn the context into an opportunity for everyone to raise their doubts so the referred legislation is understood, and make proposals. Manuel Pérez Gallego, first secretary of the Cuban Communist Party in the territory, reflected: “The success of the implementation of this policy is to reach each producer. So that their doubts are clarified, we explain them, and thus we develop the process as it should be; the country is creating the conditions to stimulate production, and these sacrifices have to be reverted to more food for the population because measures alone do not solve the problem."
