Another absurd prohibition falls

By Elsa Claro

HAVANA – They say it’s never too late, but sometimes 20 years is just too long a wait – and may Carlos Gardel forgive me for contradicting him.

Several of Cuba’s essential problems would have been solved by now if we had eliminated a blight as difficult to uproot as the ill-famed marabú tree. Of course, marabú is being used to make coal. It may not be big business, but to a small country that’s reorganizing its blockaded economy with a great deal of work any revenue is welcome, especially if it turns something bad into good (and I’m not talking just about marabús.)

The much awaited permit to build family homes in the plots that the State leased in usufruct in the past four years is one of those important and necessary steps that deserve a celestial trumpet call.

“The tenant, with his own resources, can build or promote new construction,” says the Resolution, adding that the tenant may undertake “installations and other needful or useful works for the adequate care and protection of cultivations, animals and plantations.”

The economists had been saying (and apparently someone listened) that if the State wants to repopulate the rural areas, it needs to promote living conditions that attract the farmers. The new measure is intended to do that. No one expects farmers to live in town and travel to their farm to work, wasting time and energy.

It is a fact that if the land can keep generations together, the home – where memories and children are accumulated – consolidates the links between the individual and whatever he sees growing and transforming.

Of course, it’s not all peaches and cream. A source, who asked to be unidentified, told me that he agreed with colleagues who criticized insufficiencies in the farming industry because they hampered the desired growth. “Without quality tools, one can’t carry out basic tasks, such as eliminating the marabú,” he said. “Having a machete that needs to be sharpened every five minutes is not the same as having a samurai sword, so to speak.”

Since September 2008, when the decree establishing the leasing of idle land to individual farmers was issued, 1.4 million hectares have been leased to about 200,000 persons.

The elimination of the absurdity that forbade farmers to dwell in the same land they worked should promote the objective of achieving a stable supply of farm goods that will satisfy most of the needs of the island. Cuba today spends about 2 billion dollars a year buying food from abroad, an amount that could be saved or used elsewhere, at a time when the price of food is rising throughout the world.

The stores that send farm utensils and tools (in some cases insufficient, of poor quality or much too expensive) need to be improved because now there are bank credits available to those who want to take up farming or building homes.

The congenital or acquired hindrances that burdened the UBPCs (Basic Units of Cooperative Production that, for 19 years, were not truly cooperatives*) are being eliminated; each site has its own source of construction materials and – wonder of wonders – we’re seeing the disbanding of Acopio, that poorly operated food-gathering organization that has prevented the fluid and quality commercialization of agricultural products.

The new system that allows individual farmers or collective farms to sell directly to the tourist hotels is still in operation. This mechanism should be oiled, but it works. The State is paying more to private producers and the word is that it’s studying improvements for other food producers.

In general, cooperatives benefit by these measures and with formulas of organization that allow them greater profits and social benefits. They can exploit their lands for 25 years, time that is favorable for those who perform well.

For example, the new company AzCuba hopes to increase by 20 percent its production of sugar for 2012-13. The harvest begins in December and 50 of the 85 sugar mills are ready to process the cane.

Much depends on the agricultural side of this industry, which includes the private sector, the recipient of encouragement and material improvements. If the promises and contracts are honored, the results are bound to be good.

Cooperative members and individual farmers know that it is imperative to perfect the contract system. The government knows that, too. The legal adviser to the Ministry of the Economy and Planning, Johana Odriozola Guitart, said recently that contracts must clearly specify the delivery time for merchandise, its transportation, containers, quantity and price changes.

Everyone is trying to achieve an efficiency that’s still far away. The timely purchase of adequate machinery, quality seeds, insecticides and fertilizers impacts on the final results and the payment collected.

That little house (or mansion, if the farmer earned it honestly) should promote increased farm production, as consumers spend most of their wages buying food every month. After all, to get from A to Z, we need to go through B and Y, right?

*Related article: Verticality and illegality

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