How’s agriculture doing?

From Havana

By Manuel Alberto Ramy

The daily Granma had some good news in its issue of Wednesday, June 17. Under the headline “Farmers Guarantee High Volume of Milk Production,” an article said that small farmers produced “more than 60 percent of all the milk collected in Cuba.” Those producers provided milk for “the basic basket of 60 municipalities in the country by direct supply.”

To readers outside our borders who may be asking themselves who those producers are, let me explain. They are farmers in the private sector who belong to the National Association of Small Farmers (ANAP, for the initials in Spanish) which has about 120,000 members. Along with the Cooperatives for Credit and Services (CCS), which own land and means of production, the small farmers have proven to be the most dynamic and productive members of the agro sector.

If anyone has any doubts about the above, let I say that the two forms of production — classified as private sectors by the National Statistics Bureau (ONE) — produce 57 percent of the nation’s foods, although they work only 24.4 percent of the nation’s cultivated land. This figure excludes the land set aside for tobacco farming; if we included it, the cultivated area would total 26 percent.

In other words, 75.6 percent of the cultivated land belongs to the state — here I include the Basic Units of Cooperative Production (UBPC), although these are technically not state-owned — yet it accounts for only 45 percent of the foods produced. This is a topic to think about and consider seriously, so as to avoid the bureaucratic pitfalls and some conceptual fog often used as ideological trenches.

I found these figures in “Agricultural Production and the Necessary Transformations,” a paper by Armando Nova, doctor in economic sciences, professor and researcher at the Center for the Cuban Economy. According to him, between January and March of this year, “the cattle segment shows a slight increase, where the private sector [CCS and small farmers] records the largest growth in the period (105 percent), whereas the state sector and the Basic Units of Cooperative Production [which do not own the land] declined by 3 and 1.1 percent, respectively.”

No one can fail to see that the increase in the cattle segment in the private sector compensates for the decline in the state-run sector. This clearly explains the growing importance of other forms of ownership and production in the agricultural economy.

According to Professor Nova’s research, the modest increase in dairy production has been maintained for a couple of years and “is associated, among other factors, to the increase in the prices paid to the producers.”

For the benefit of the reader, the liter of milk costs between 2.45 and 2.48 pesos (ordinary currency or MN), according to quality, and about 2 cents in convertible pesos (CUC). Previously, the state paid between 0.95 and 0.98 cents (MN) and zero convertible pesos (CUC).

These notes (I am tempted to write other articles about a topic that’s vital for the country) are not meant to apologize for one form of production and ownership or to gratuitously denigrate other forms. They are a picture in words and data. The reality is the reality. Small land holdings can be as risky as large land holdings or the state-run megaproperty.

In my opinion, the performance of cooperatives like the CCS in no way contradicts the socialist system. They have proved to be extremely efficient and productive, qualities that we once cherished and today need more than ever. The country cannot continue to spend about $2 billion on imported food when it has the capacity and the methodology to fill that need at home. Will the bureaucracy and the ideological fog persist?

When I think about this, I recall that Law 259 on the granting of idle land in usufruct states that the new proprietor must be underwritten by a cooperative and must meet CCS standards. To bring the CCS and the new farmers together is a guarantee of efficiency because of their positive statistics. At the same time, the match provides support and security to farmers just starting or restarting production.

If my instincts and nose are right, it is clear that the folks who wrote that law acknowledge the virtues of the CCS. I hope that I’m right and that nobody jams a stick in the wheels of progress.

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

Note: The above work was published June 22 in Progreso Semanal, in the author’s blog “A Correspondent’s Notebook.”