Ten days have been enough for those from Pinar del Río who requested idle land to grow rice, encouraged by the visit of Deputy Prime Minister Jorge Luis Tapia Fonseca, to be disillusioned. “If I know it was going to be like this, I’m not asking for land. They gave me two caballerias and I’m grateful because before it was difficult to take an area. But with those prices you can’t,” Yoserky López Llobera told provincial newspaper Guerrilla.
The young man worked in the Jorge González Ulloa cooperative, one of the largest grain producers in the country until a few years ago, with some 100,000 quintals according to the newspaper, but whose harvest has plummeted. Coming from the Sierra Maestra batey, where 800 of the more than 1,000 hectares ceded in usufruct by the Los Palacios Agro-industrial Grain Company are located, the boy was a flood worker and one of the 200 employees who were left without work due to the drop in the production.
Ariel García Pérez, director of the company, assured that the delivery of land that was no longer used due to lack of resources would be beneficial, although just announced a transfer of 10% of the total available. “They provided me with two caballerias of land, which are broken by the old cost card,” says Loivan Hano Abrahantes, who already had land and requested more. “Rice needs no less than four tasks, which used to cost me about 5,000 pesos, now it’s 10,800, only in preparation, without counting the rest in what you have to invest.”
“Rice needs no less than four tasks, which used to cost me about 5,000 pesos, now it’s 10,800, only in preparation, not counting the rest in what you have to invest in”
Hano, who belonged to the cooperative, had their land plowed as of November 22, like Yoserky López, but they have not yet signed the invoice for the change in the cost sheet.
“What the vice prime minister explained during his visit was that the minimum per hectare was around 13,000 pesos of profit, but now they have changed the price of everything: water, seed, aviation, and if there is no technological package on top of that ( a kit of fertilizers, pesticides and other chemicals that has been distributed for years), we practically sow at risk. That was not what they said at first,” Hano Abrahantes protests, adding other inconveniences.
To the expenses are added the obstacles of the municipality, which requires him to harvest the rice in a month, but he still does not have the credit. In addition, he claims that there is a five-month delay in payment.
“This is new. Nobody ever thought that agriculture was going to be done without a technological package. Today the technological package is the land, the man, the water, and the oil that can be acquired,” says Yoannis Campos Segura, president of the cooperative.
Another of the producers consulted, Agustín Echeverría, has found a way to replace the technological package and his rice works better, but he does not stop complaining either. “They have not come here to explain anything, neither from the Bank, nor from the CAI (Sugar Agroindustrial Complex, which delivers fertilizers), nor from aviation. Meanwhile, the rice has not been planted, and the peasant has a job.”
According to his account, since Tapia Fonseca passed through the area, some 50 producers have joined, but he wonders how they will be able to sow if the changes in the cost sheet do not add up.
“What youth do is come for a year, they get a little harvest, collect the money and leave. So we can’t raise either”
The price of a quintal of wet paddy rice, when sold to the company, rises between 1,000 and 1,300 pesos depending on the cost tab. “There are many producers who have to request a loan and 53 of them are dismissed. First they must become Bank clients, and according to their policy, they must present a co-debtor with no less than 35,000 pesos,” adds Campos Segura.
In his opinion, along with the technical and chemical limitations, there is money: “The most effective way for there to be production is for the producer to be approved through credit for certain cash so that, by not being able to achieve the tasks provided by the Company, can do it by hiring individuals, either through MSMEs or through a contract in the cooperative, with mutually agreed prices”.
The official points out as an added problem that there are those who have requested a loan from the bank and, once granted, leave the country. Agustín Echeverría, along these lines, accuses young people of a lack of commitment to the land. “What the youth do is come for a year, they harvest a little crop, collect the money and leave. We can’t get up like this either.”
Since the land in Pinar del Río was ceded in usufruct, a process that was – they explain – fast, because hectares will also be used for livestock, 70 people, most of them unemployed, are in the process of joining the cooperative and there are 27 peasants who have expanded your area.
The Jorge González Ulloa groups 320 associates, of which 290 are rice farmers and, according to Campos Segura, “a wooden housing module, with a solar panel, will be assigned so that the farmer can remain on his lot and give him the attention he cultivation requires. This would also help to link the family with the field”.
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