Digging into the agricultural sector

From Havana

Digging into the agricultural sector

The pebble in the shoe

By Manuel Alberto Ramy

Alimentary security – defined as strategic – and farm production are intimately connected. More than one year after Law 259 (a law that distributes land for the usufruct of those who are willing to till it) was enacted, how has the sector progressed?

With this question in mind, I climbed into my car and traveled through some of the Havana municipalities that are key to farm production. I spoke with farmers and specialists, visited farmers’ markets and visited the website of the National Statistics Office (ONE). I wrote down notes about everything, so I can now give a presentable form of the raw data.

As of August 2009, agricultural and cattle production continues to decline, a drop that follows us like an evil shadow. Total decline is 7.7 percent, compared with the same period last year, when non-sugar-cane agriculture decreased by 4.7 percent and cattle production by 11 percent.

The production of tubers, roots and plantain dropped 10.7 percent, a fall determined by the plantains, which, with a production of 255,800 tons, dropped by 38.4 percent, or 159,200 fewer tons. According to farmers and specialists, this decline is a consequence of the hurricanes that hit us last year. “Plantain takes time to recover,” I was told by a farmer near Artemisa, in southwest Havana province.

Not everything is a disaster. Tuber production has increased by 5.1 percent, particularly the sweet potato (+42.2 percent) and the ordinary potato (+50.7 percent), an increase that has brought the price of potatoes to 1 Cuban peso per pound, the price that used to be charged in the black market.

However, while some productions increase, others drop, such as the malanga (down 25.6 percent), yucca (-43.6 percent) and other tubers (-10.5 percent.)

In this sort of production seesaw, greens (1,253,600 tons) increased by 5.4 percent, or 64,600 tons more than in the same period last year. Experts credit this favorable jump to the intensive planting of greens with a short reproductive cycle, with an eye to filling the gap of other agricultural products.

Increased production in this sector is represented by tomatoes (+42.8 percent) and garlic (+8.1 percent). Decreased production involved, pumpkin, onions, pimento, cucumber, cabbage and other produce.

An interesting fact is represented by the 47.2 percent increase in rice production, especially soft-hull rice; production was almost 151,000 tons. The same happened with beans; the 48,000-ton production represents an increase of 30.8 percent. However, the coveted corn (delicious in tamales or wrapped in leaves) dropped 22.2 percent. Only 123,400 tons were produced.

“What’s the story with grapefruit?” is a question heard often in the market. Only grapefruit? In general, citrus fruits have dropped by 45.3 percent, owing, according to some specialists, to a blight of “greening” in the groves. “Greening” (HLB, or yellow dragon disease) is a virus that attacks citrus fruits. There is no antidote. The only solution is to burn the trees, which means losing an adequate supply and seeing an increase in the price of whatever fruits can be found.

Who is to blame for the drop in fruit production, which declined by 6 percent to merely 258,700 tons? Was it the price paid to farmers? Or was it the loss of trees caused by last year’s hurricanes? As in everything else, there is no single cause. These are causal confluences, although some have greater influence than others.

Which sectors shape up as the most productive?

The non-state sector, which ONE describes as “private,” composed of the credit-and-service cooperatives and the small farmers, produced until late August 47 percent of the greens, 44.4 percent of the tubers and roots, 53.5 percent of the plantain, almost 60 percent of the garden produce, 48 percent of the rice, 68 percent of the tomatoes, 88 percent of the garlic, 62 percent of the pimento, 71.5 percent of the corn, 72 percent of the beans, and 67 percent of the fruits.

To do this, private producers used only 24 percent of the country’s cultivated land and responded efficiently and quickly to the demand of officials by increasing the production of rice (a cereal whose importation needs to be reduced) and beans.

The numbers are more eloquent than words. If practice is the criterion of truth, we don’t have to dump socialism to find solutions that do not essentially contradict the system. Moreover, Lenin himself in one of his last articles in Pravda hailed the cooperatives as the form of socialism closest to the ideal sought in the Soviet Union in the 1920s.

Lenin’s quote not only highlights the efficacy of specific forms of production but can also be extended to other areas of the economy, such as agricultural production.

The commercialization of agricultural products

Every productive cycle consists of production-collection-commercialization. And commercialization has a stick in the wheel. I’m talking about the state monopoly called the Collection Enterprise.

On Aug. 1, the state enterprise called Acopio (a Spanish word meaning collection or gathering) was placed once again under the control of the Ministry of Domestic Trade. In 1976, a similar decision was made, but ten years later, in 1986, Acopio returned to the Ministry of Agriculture because its problems could not be solved.

Acopio has gone back and forth as often as a baseball player who can’t find a position on the field that suits him.

It happens that, on my sojourn through fields in Alquizar, Guira de Melena, San Antonio de los Baños and Quivicán, I saw that much of the successful production of sweet potato (yam) was running into serious problems in terms of commercialization.

“There are no bags, and the trucks from Acopio don’t show up,” a farmer told me, his eyes downcast. The situation has reached the point where the producers themselves have begun to use their tractors and ox-carts to carry the yams to the shipping docks.

“Much of it goes by train to the east,” said a man in Alquizar. But the train doesn’t always leave on time.

“Look, look,” said another farmer, pointing to yam still in the soil. It shouldn’t remain there more than five months and “in some places it sits there for seven months.” This brings about several consequences: costs rise, plagues such as tetuán begin to develop, and the rotation of new crops is delayed, especially the planting of potato in land where yam is still rotting.

The manager of a state-run farm, who asked for anonymity, told me that “sometimes 48 hours elapse between the picking and the shipping.” And delays in transportation further affect the quality of the produce at the point of sale.

This pebble in the shoe is not new. According to unofficial sources, during last year’s tomato harvest 30 percent of the production was lost because of problems along the production-distribution-change-consumption chain. The problems involved packaging, transportation, fuel shortage and the obsolescence of several food industries.

Some specialists believe that, regardless of the measures taken, the productive forces still are bogged down and need to be released throughout the production-distribution-change-consumption cycle.

They say that an analysis is needed of the best use of property, of its effective tilling. They say it is important to bear in mind the real and objective existence of the market and use it as a tool for the benefit of social interests.

Needless to say, the specialists favor diversifying the forms of commercialization and eliminating the monopoly held by the Acopio State Enterprise.

Why not allow the existence of commercialization cooperatives? It may be one way to remove the pebble from the shoe and the stick from the wheel.

Manuel Alberto Ramy is Havana bureau chief of Radio Progreso Alternativa and editor of Progreso Semanal, the Spanish-language version of Progreso Weekly.