Instead of “drama” I would put “dislikes accumulate” in Ciego de Ávila and they threaten to get even worse, after the deputy prime minister, Jorge Luis Tapia Fonseca, warned on Tuesday that the basket is at “risk” due to non-compliance by meat producers. According to the available data, of 3,000 possible contracts, the Meat Company has only made 383 “due to the resistance of the producers due to the obligation to stable the animals and the discounts of three and five percent during the sale”.
The official visited the province this week to follow up on the sugar harvest, which promises an unprecedented disaster, and left with the confirmation of a new failure. The investment valued at more than 330 million pesos that was made last month to start grinding at the Ciro Redondo power plant and synchronize it with the Bioelectric plant is going down the drain and there are no producers to blame here.
The investment valued at more than 330 million pesos that was made last month to start grinding at the Ciro Redondo power plant and synchronize it with the Bioelectric plant goes down the drain
The authorities had scheduled 11 previous actions that had to be carried out to achieve the objective, but none have been carried out. Six of them, he says with forcefulness the provincial newspaper Invasive“they have no solution”, since they are in the hands of Chinese operators who must reach the Island and will be in charge of making adjustments and changes in the design of the boiler feed so that the bagasse is burned in its entirety, as it does the marabou
Carmen Taboada Hernández, vice president of the joint venture Biopower SA, gave more technical details about the differences in the granulometry of the masses and the problems for the bagasse to reach the hopper adequately, a matter in which there is no room for neglect, since it can cause an explosion if a noticeable pressure change occurs.
The only good thing that has happened in relation to the harvest is the arrival in Cuba of spare parts for the harvesters, but not even with those. “At the end of February we have eight harvesters that can provide us with 480 tons of marabou per day and this does not cover the demand of the plant, which needs 1,200 to 1,500 in 24 hours. The mechanism must be adjusted and bagasse burned at one hundred percent. There can be no more delays,” said Tapias Fonseca, who sees the catastrophe coming.
But the problems do not end there, since of the 11 measures there are still five left, those related to energy, and they have not been fulfilled either, said Julio García Pérez, president of the Azcuba business group.
“When the plant grinds at a capacity between 55 and 60 percent, the current shoots up. The factory consumes more energy than expected in the original design, especially in the peaks that are generated during grinding. It has failed, also, the availability of water, the factory was stopped for 20 hours because of that,” he added.
The problems accumulate in such a way that there is even a lack of marabou, a species that is characterized by being invasive
The problems accumulate in such a way that there is even a lack of marabou, a species that is characterized by being invasive. The province began a planting program to fill the gap, but the newspaper indicates that there are 3,724 hectares planned for this, of which only 307 have been planted and the Agroforestry Company does not yet have the technical nurseries.
During Tapia Fonseca’s visit, a fund of 12 million dollars was announced for studies and investments that, in the long term, allow the use of other biomass technologies for “dead time”, but the deputy prime minister called for an emergency and that responsible persons be appointed with specific tasks to act immediately.
Faced with such a situation in the Ciro Redondo, the authorities have activated the Primero de Enero plant to help comply with a sugar plan that is expected to be so bad that the official press is full of information that already warns of what is coming.
“At this point there is too much accumulated experience to know that the success of the sugar harvest continues to be a major task here, influenced by other variants, which also show numbers in red,” indicates Invasor.
“Ciego de Ávila cannot afford another campaign with pyrrhic yields,” says the newspaper, which compiles a good list of obstacles: planting is late, the land free of marabou does not produce, there are 30 pieces of heavy machinery not available and the The measures to stimulate agriculture announced by the Government are “halfway through,” the newspaper warns with slight optimism.
These measures also came up when the producers were reproached for not complying with the milk delivery plan and, moreover, for selling without having satisfied the contract with the State.
“Eating pork and paying for it at acceptable prices will be an even longer road, another debt that weighs on the agribusiness and on the Cuban table”
According to the note, “the Livestock Control registry is guided by a few numbers and the difference between what is real and what is on paper is thousands of head. If the plans are made based on figures that are not real, the problem will only be aggravate”.
The authorities agreed to establish a plan with reserves below potential. Farmers with more than 10 cows must deliver around 550 liters a year to meet their commitments, they recalled, although they will review the contract in a particular way. The same will be done with the delivery of land since there are more than 1,468 people who have cattle but not land, something that they have promised to solve before the end of the month.
In addition to the already mentioned problems with beef, the pork company is also not exempt from drawbacks, since there are problems importing animal feed that they try to avoid by encouraging the consumption of plant-based proteins, such as those derived from corn, soy and sorghum.
The newspaper freely admits: “Eating pork and paying for it at acceptable prices will be an even longer road, another debt that weighs on the agribusiness and on the Cuban table.”
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