the province of Ciego de Avila planted 1,130 hectares of papa for the current harvest, which is about to end. It, hoping to obtain 22,400 tons. But at this point, with summer at the gates, what was collected is much less than expected: barely 11,300.
According to official newspaper invaderUntil the week that ends, only 173 hectares remained to be harvested, a process that the copious rains of the last few days on the Island made difficult, favoring the rotting of the tuber that remains in the field.
Added to this, the yields per hectare are discouraging. “Fields of four tons per hectare (t/ha),” assured Raúl Monguía Rodríguez, a specialist in this crop from the Provincial Delegation of Agriculture.
The delay in the potato harvest was due to the fact that the 25 harvesters sent to Ciego arrived late. “Why not bring harvesting machines earlier? Because they were from Mayabeque, Cienfuegos and Villa Clara, which were also harvesting at that stage,” explained the specialist.
The lost time, he clarified, also weighs on the low yields, since “longer time underground, greater possibility of rotting.”
According to Monguia, yields, which were around 20 t/ha and even reached 25, plummeted.
At the beginning of April, the average per hectare was 18.6 tons; in early May they dropped to 12.7; but now there are only ten.
“This must be the worst campaign of the last 20 years”sentenced.
For this reason, he clarified invaderthe shipment of potatoes to the neighboring province of Las Tunas was barely half of what was agreed, something terrible for Cubans, who hardly see potatoes during the first months of the year and are rationed at the rate of a few pounds per consumer.
According to the peasants, the humidity of the soil displaced the beginning of the campaign; then, in November, it was not possible to furrow and fertilize the 110 hectares where planting was to begin, and backlogs accumulated.
“There we lost 17 days. We had to finish on January 10 and we finished planting on the 27th because, in addition, the imported seed arrived late. On December 30 we were still receiving it and in some varieties we must wait several days for it to germinate in order to plant them. Monguia explained.
“Neither did all the resources enter nor did they enter in time. Only the pre-emergent herbicide entered 100%, although it was not the indicated one. In the case of chemicals, they did not reach 30% and there are applications for the thin and round leaf, which are like the Rosefin of humans… By not having it, the fungi flourished and the losses worsened,” he summarized.
This being the case of the potato, a product that the State finances and sows, which has at its disposal the best lands and resources, What is left for the peasants who barely have help to carry out their harvests?
Explains Leonel Capote, from Güira de Melena, and Twitter: “In a few months, agricultural products will become scarcer. The cold season crops are over. It has not been possible to prepare the land to sow summer products due to lack of fuelwasting precious time when it wasn’t raining”.
“Now the rains have begun, the grass is growing and the land has not been plowed. But even if you get the fuel, nothing can be done. It’s a waste of time and the days go by. That which cannot be sown today, is what will be missing in the coming months”he underlined.
“That is why agriculture must be hit when it takes them. Plow, prepare land and sow at the right time. For later, it is late. It will be food that will be missing from the table,” he concluded.
Capote himself is an example that not only the lack of resources hits agricultural production in a country whose authorities demand more sowing to stop importing food.
just in april reported the loss of his pumpkin cropjust two months after the Government affirmed that food was wasted in Cuba due to “food ignorance”.
In a message on Twitter in which he tagged Miguel Díaz-Canel and the Ministry of Agriculture (MINAGRI), Capote questioned. “Urge the peasants to: sow more… Produce more… Here is my harvest, what do we do with it?”
“I picked the pumpkins from the field and brought them down to the shade of a tree. There is no destination for them, nobody wants to buy. Apparently, there is enough,” he lamented.
As he explained at the time, the harvest was contracted with a Credit and Services Cooperative (CCS) of Artemisa, but the entity gave him hope for a month and told him that “they came every week to buy them.” The reality, according to the farmer, was that “they came once and they didn’t come again.”
“As there is nothing to eat, there is no rice or anything, corn and whatever food is in great demand and they pay you right there, so it is better for everyone to sell it directly to the people. You earn more without the need to abuse. People know that now everything is expensive and the State itself is the highest seller. But the State does not understand that and, if you do not comply with Acopio, who wants to take 90% of the harvest, they will fine you. However, it is better a thousand times to pay the fine than to sell to Acopio,” a farmer told DIARIO DE CUBA in 2021 who, for obvious reasons, did not want to reveal his name.
In Camagüey, in 2021, numerous farmers denounced the official newspaper Go aheadwhich were losing tons of mangoes due to the inefficiency of the State Acopio monopoly and the impossibility of selling the fruits freely.