Posted on Sun, Jan. 06, 2008
By MIAMI HERALD STAFF
Cuba@MiamiHerald.com
SANTIAGO de CUBA, Cuba -- Cuban farmers have a suggestion for how the
government can put millions of acres of fallow land to work and put more
food on everyone's table.
Give state-owned lands to them, and allow a bit of capitalism.
''We are all hoping for some change -- a new system that allows you to
have a better life and do some business,'' said Elena, a small farmer
from the Santiago de Cuba area. ``Here, you are not even the boss of
what's yours.''
Interim president Raúl Castro has made it clear as he grapples with the
illness of his brother Fidel that one of the chief troubles the country
faces is how to put more food on the dinner table without compromising
the 49-year-old revolution's socialist doctrine.
He has declared war on inefficient farming, doubled and tripled some of
the prices that the government pays to farmers, and complained that
millions of acres are now idle. Offials have said they may even allow in
more foreign investments in the food sector.
The result: The government claimed late last month that the agricultural
economy had grown by a whopping 24 percent in 2007 -- after three years
of steady drops.
But food prices remain high: One pound of tomatoes can cost a day's wage
in a country where the average weekly salary is $3.25. Cuba is spending
$1.6 billion annually on food imports, including $350 million last year
from the United States alone.
While many farmers agree the Raúl Castro government is taking new
interest in boosting production, they say that only giving land to
private farmers and allowing a little more capitalism in their communist
state will overcome the many obstacles in Cuba's largely
government-ruled and hugely inefficient agricultural sector.
''They claim they are reviving agriculture,'' said Luis, a toothless
farmer from central Cuba who turned to food crops after retiring as a
cowhand. ``Reviving what? Look at the conditions I live in. Sometimes I
can't sell at all, because if I did, I wouldn't have anything to eat.''
He looked at his property, a squalid collection of shacks with a
dilapitated outhouse, where a phone book served as toilet paper.
Cuba's government owns 85 percent of the arable land and controls all
supplies like seeds, herbicides, feed and fuel. Private farmers who own
the other 15 percent produce 60 percent of the island's food, the
government has acknowledged.
Experts estimate there are up to 225,000 private farmers in Cuba, as
well as another 350,000 farmers working on cooperatives that own their
own land, within a system that has long been dominated by Soviet-style,
state-owned collective farms.
The government makes farmers sell a large quota of their products at
cheap prices to the government, which then doles them out to Cubans as
part of their monthly ration cards. Only after the farmers have met
their government quotas can they sell the rest at food markets, where
prices are set by supply and demand.
Under Raúl Castro, some farmers have begun to receive plots of neglected
state land in the hopes they can turn productivity around, some growers
said. It's an effort that began in the 1990s, and has apparently been
revived as part of Castro's battle against marabú, the thorny bush that
threatens much of the arable land.
''All you see around here is marabú,'' said Nelson, a farmer in central
Ciego de Avila. ``The state has all this land, and they're doing nothing
with it. They are going to start giving it to the people. We've been
struggling with that for years, and it's just now that they are doing
something about it.''
Raúl Castro says a lack of land is not the problem.
''It seems to me that there is plenty of land,'' Raúl Castro said in a
July speech. ``As I drove in here I could see that everything around is
green and pretty, but what drew my attention the most, what I found
prettier, was the marabú growing along the road.''
The Cuban government estimates that at least a third of its arable land
is covered in marabú, sometimes called ''witch's weed,'' because it's so
hard to fight. Some three million acres of farm land is now covered by
it, according to the government.
''We face the imperative of making our land produce more, and the land
is there to be tilled,'' Raúl Castro said. ``We must offer these
producers adequate incentives for the work they carry out in Cuba's
suffocating heat.''
But farmers argue there are more problems: Prices the government pays
for their crops barely allow them to cover their costs. Profits come
only from what they can sell at the far more lucrative farmer's markets.
Supplies controlled by the government like animal feed and fertilizer
are scarce and often expensive. If the government wants to increase food
production, it needs to provide growers with machinery, fuel, and other
necessities, farmers said.
''The problem is that the state pays the farmer very little and sells to
the public very high,'' said Pablo, a farmer in central Cuba. ``I would
be better off if I could sell directly to the public, because I get more
that way. They say they are going to do things to stimulate production,
but more or less they don't do anything.''
Orlando Lugo, head of the National Small Growers Association, told
Bohemia magazine there were places last year that didn't plant potatoes,
because farmers did not have the materials needed to prepare the soil.
With the proper resources, growers in Havana could double or triple
output, he added..
''We need more resources,'' Lugo said. ``We lack tractors, and there's
barely enough machinery and a shortage of fuel.''
When agriculture first tanked in the mid-90s after the loss of Soviet
subsidies, Cuba broke up state farms and put them in the hands of
private cooperatives while keeping ownership of the land. University of
Florida agricultural economist William A. Messina Jr. said the move was
a step in the right direction, but farmers still face too many restrictions.
''I think Cuban agriculture is trudging along,'' Messina said. ``There's
a tremendous amount of potential, lots of good lands . . . [But] the
whole administrative structure governing food sales and distribution has
strained the system.''
Carmelo, a Ciego de Avila farmer who describes himself as a loyal member
of the Communist Party, said all that is beginning to change because the
government is listening to farmers' ideas.
''Since Raúl took over, there's been a lot of changes and help,'' he
said. ``Here is the way I see it: The ... law says the land belongs to
who works it. So fine. Let the land be ours and let the price be ours to
set. We need a little capitalism -- adapted to socialism.''
The Miami Herald withheld the name of the correspondent who wrote this
report and the surnames of the people quoted, because the reporter did
not have the journalist visa required by the Cuban government to report
from the island.
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