Cuba
growing less food than 5 years ago despite agriculture reforms
Cuba
is producing less food than it did five years ago despite efforts to
increase agriculture production, the government reported on Friday.
31
August, 2012
Some
export crops and farm output aimed at substituting food imports
registered minor gains, but overall output last year remained below
2007 levels, according to a report issued by the National Statistics
Office
The
government has also reported that food prices rose 20 percent in
2011.
Cuban
President Raul Castro has made increasing food production a priority
since he took over as president from his ailing brother, Fidel, in
2008.
The
communist country imports up to 70 percent of its food and is
investing hundreds of millions of dollars to boost production of
rice, beans, coffee and milk and reduce imports.
Domestic
production of two Cuban food staples has increased, the government
said. Rice production reached 566,400 tonnes compared with 439,600
tonnes in 2007, and farmers produced 133,000 tonnes of beans with
97,200 tonnes in 2007.
To
stimulate production, Castro has decentralized decision-making,
opened up more space for farmers to sell directly to consumers and
raised prices the state pays for produce. He has stopped short of
allowing market forces to take hold and drive production.
Marino
Murillo, who is leading efforts to steer Cuba's state-dominated
economy in a more market-friendly direction, announced in July that a
government effort to reduce state bureaucracy in the agriculture
sector had recently been completed.
Speaking
to the National Assembly, he outlined plans for separating
quasi-cooperatives from the state and allowing them to operate like
private cooperatives. These operations, formed by state-run companies
in the mid-1990s on 30 percent of Cuba's arable land, have performed
poorly.
Murillo
also said at that time that a land-lease program begun in 2008
involving some 170,000 farmers would be expanded to allow up to five
times more land per individual.
Private
farmers produce the bulk of the food in Cuba on a fraction of the
land. This has led farmers and agricultural experts inside and
outside the country to call on the state to pull back further and let
market forces drive the sector.
Thanks for the post. Today I watched one documentary film named We Feed The World. In this documentary film, the filmmaker Erwin Wagenhofer traces the origins of the food we eat and views modern industrial production of food and factory farming in a critical light. I recommend you to watch this, if you did n't watch yet.
ReplyDelete