Cuba seeks Brazil aid to boost farm production

Cuba seeks Brazil aid to boost farm production
By Stabroek staff - Saturday, November 12, 2011

SAO PAULO, (Reuters) – Cuba is seeking a credit of $200 million from
Brazil to import agricultural machinery and technology in hopes of
increasing food output and reducing its reliance on imports, a
Brazilian official said yesterday.

The communist island thinks the aid will allow it to double its
production of grains, which would enable it to meet its domestic
demand, said Francesco Pierri, chief international advisor in Brazil's
Ministry of Agrarian Development.

"They are very ambitious goals," he told Reuters in a telephone
interview from Havana.

Brazilian Agrarian Development Minister Afonso Florence was in the
Cuban capital on Friday to sign a technical cooperation agreement with
the Cuban government, Pierri said.

Assuming all goes as planned, including approval of the credits by the
Brazilian government, Brazil will ship Cuba farm equipment and
irrigation systems starting next year. This would fill a top need for
the financially troubled country.

"Cuba has great technical capacity. What it lacks are machines," Pierri
said.

The Caribbean island is in the midst of reforms to its Soviet-style
economy with the goal of ending its chronic money woes and ensuring the
survival of the socialist system imposed after the 1959 revolution.

Because of its inability to produce sufficient food, Cuba imports most
of what it eats at a budget-draining cost of $1.5 billion to $2 billion
a year.

Cuba plans to use the aid from Brazil, which has the biggest economy in
Latin America, to boost production of rice, beans, corn, soy beans and
sorghum, and to raise more cattle, Pierri said.

"Cuba calculates that right now it has about 50 percent of the
production of grains that it needs, and projects that with this program
it will reach 100 percent," he said.

President Raul Castro has made increased agricultural production a top
priority since succeeding ailing older brother Fidel Castro as
president in 2008.

He has taken steps including the granting of 4 million acres (1.6
million hectares) of unused land to private farmers for cultivation.

Brazil has been one of Cuba's biggest benefactors in recent years. The
planned agricultural assistance will be provided under a program called
More Food, which was originally created to help African countries such
as Ghana and Zimbabwe.

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