Earlier this month, the Cuba-Mexico Friendship Agricultural Production Cooperative began planting potatoes in the municipality of Alquízar, Artemisa. However, the cold season got off to a bad start, and the power cuts forced changes in the irrigation cycles that have ended up damaging most of the crop.
“This field occupies 12 caballerias [161 hectáreas] of land divided into four quadrants. Three of these quadrants were spoiled, only one is being achieved,” Mauricio Díaz, a resident near the fields planted with the tuber, explained to 14ymedio. “It was because of the blackouts,” he adds.
“For everything to have gone well, it would have been necessary to maintain irrigation for several hours and with a certain intensity,” Díaz details. “But since here they are cutting off power almost every day, it was decided to reduce the time to avoid the blackouts and add more water in fewer hours. The result was that the land was flooded and the potatoes rotted.”
Only about 40 hectares of the crop managed to save themselves from excess humidity. “We have had to start dismantling the rest and the townspeople are coming to try to take away the rotten potatoes, even if it is to feed them to the pigs,” says the farmer.
“There are those who have gotten lucky and have managed to find some potatoes in good condition among the others that were spoiled, but that is hard work because here the plague doesn’t even let you breathe”
“There are those who have gotten lucky and have managed to find some potatoes in good condition among the others that were spoiled, but that is hard work because here the plague doesn’t even let you breathe and the flies are everywhere,” clarifies. “The worst thing is that this planting was already small compared to other years and now with this situation, Alquízar will hardly be able to harvest the product.”
At the beginning of November, the cooperative began the campaign with the planting of 68 hectares of potatoes and the initial plans were to plant 170, 83 of them with national seed and the rest from abroad, according to what Pedro Miguel García told the local press. Veliz, director of the agricultural entity.
“Currently we are working on preparing the land for the sowing of the imported seed, which should end in the first days of December,” García Veliz clarified then, who acknowledged that in this cold campaign the province of Artemisa had only planned plant 450 hectares, 150 less than in the previous year.
The main territories for tuber cultivation in the province are Alquízar, Güira de Melena, Artemisa and San Antonio de los Baños. The harvest is scheduled for the first days of February, but the chances of recovering the damaged hectares are remote. “This is going to be the worst year I can remember for potatoes in a long time,” warns a worker at the Cuba-Mexico Friendship Cooperative.
“We had to choose between two evils: either add more water in less time or have our crops dry up due to lack of water”
“We are going to have big losses because most of the seed we are using is imported and paid for in foreign currency,” he told this newspaper. “But what could be done if the blackouts did not allow anything to be done as it should be. We had to choose between two evils: either add more water in less time or have our crops dry up due to lack of water.”
The bad news seems to haunt a production that has fallen to historic lows. The 2021-2022 campaign barely achieved a harvest of 93,650 tons, the worst in the last 30 years, with the exception of 2014, according to a report released by the Ministry of Agriculture. The negative numbers have forced to sell the potato in a rationed way in recent years.
Last February, the retail price of the product almost doubled when it went from 3 pesos a pound to 5 pesos and a new price for refrigerated potatoes was created, which is now 6 pesos. The official argument for this increase was the increase in the cost of agricultural inputs and the increase in the labor cost per employee.
On the black market, a three-pound bag of potatoes currently costs 250 pesos, but even at that price the product often disappears from informal trade networks. With the catastrophe that occurred in Alquízar, it is very likely that its price will continue to rise and its presence will become more and more sporadic in the coming months.
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