Cuba: The challenges of agropecuarian production

By Weekly Archive On Feb 18, 2009

"…in
general, it has ceased to be a source of stimulus for production…"

Before
the triumph of the Revolution in January 1959, the gathering and
storage of agropecuarian (farm-and-cattle) production was a task for
private agents, who were a basic institution of Cuba’s agrarian
economy. After the proclamation of the first Agrarian Reform Law in
May of that year, the government embarked on the eradication of the
intermediary trade in agropecuarian production, which was a source of
exploitation for the producers and price fixing for the consumers.
For that purpose, the task was distributed between the ag industry
and the state collection companies that were created by the National
Institute of Agrarian Reform (INRA) in late 1959.

These
collection companies, which specialized in different harvests, were
the hard nucleus of the collection system created in Cuban
agriculture in the following years, a system that — with varying
degrees of luck — remains to this day. The system was formed by the
direct roundup of the ag industry; the harvesting by companies
specialized in certain products like tobacco, coffee and others; and
the gathering of products intended for direct consumption.

The
principal and numerous functions of this system of collection were,
at the time,

• to
estimate the productions being processed;

• to
purchase specific products;

• to
slaughter the cattle;

• to
preserve, in warehouses and refrigerators, the reserve products;

• to
balance and distribute the production intended for consumption;

• to
operate the large supply or major distribution centers, and

• to
supply and ration consumer goods to the public.

To
carry out those functions, the system of collection has acquired
numerous subsidiaries and territorial branches, collection networks
and centers, and qualified inspectors, as well as the necessary
tools, such as transportation and packaging.

The
INRA’s collection system reached its highest level of development in
the 1960s. It was dismantled in the 1970s and ’80s and partially
reconstituted in the 1990s as the Union of Collection Companies, at a
time when resources were not greatly available.

In
the first half of the 1980s, and again in the 1990s, the INRA system
had to coexist with the presence of a free agropecuarian market and
the emergence of new intermediary agents. At the start of the 21st
Century, the system is still far from recuperating its previous
capabilities and must assume new functions, such as the distribution
and retail sale of products and the supply to the tourist industry.
In fact, the system of collection of agropecuarian products has
ceased to be a source of stimulus for the production of the various
sectors — farm, cooperative or state — and, particularly, it has
ceased to be a mechanism of control over the production and the
producers. [1]

At
present, numerous problems handicap the operation of the state
collection of farm-and-cattle production, even though this is the
only system that guarantees producers the sale of all their products
at standard prices and the social destination of their products.
Deficiencies of all kinds related to planning, programmed collection,
transportation, preservation of products, etc., have affected the
prestige of this organization to the point that it is blamed for the
insufficiencies of Cuba’s agriculture, of which it is only a part,
and for issues outside its ken, such as the official prices for
collection, or the lack of resources.

Right
now, the reconstitution of a state collection system is going through
different conditions, improvements and challenges. Among the first
are the conditions related to the whole of the agrarian sector, the
system of management and planning of the economy established for it,
and the means and resources that have been assigned.

Among
the second are the necessary decentralization of the whole of the
agropecuarian activities, hinted at in the so-called
"municipalization of agriculture," and the recovery of
social consumption and the eventual suppression of rationing.

And
among the third are the numerous challenges posited by the recovery
and development of agropecuarian commercialization to a state
collection system that has to take part in the results of
agropecuarian production, among them:

• To
reconstruct the state collection system on new foundations.

• To
dispose of the capabilities and resources needed for the
accomplishment of all its functions, both new and traditional.

• To
become a mechanism of encouragement for the increase and efficiency
of the production, in all its sectors.

• To
elevate the efficiency of the collection activities through the
rationalization of its task, economic efficiency and the
accomplishment of the social priorities previously set.

• To
function in the same conditions as the free agropecuarian market.

We
may conclude that the recovery of Cuba’s agriculture and its
socialist foundations demands the recuperation of the state
collection system at the same time as (or even before) the
recuperation of the agropecuarian production, whose circulation and
planned destiny it must guarantee.

Juan
Valdés Paz, a Cuban sociologist, is the author of numerous essays
related to the agropecuarian subject, as well as other aspects of
Cuban society.

[1]
See the author’s "The
processes of agrarian organization in Cuba, 1959-2006," Havana,
2008.