MIAMI, United States. – The Cuban regime allocated 18 million pesos to the construction and start-up of a moringa processing plant, which is currently “more than 90 percent complete,” according to reported the Cuban News Agency (ACN).
The plant, which is located in the South of Jíbaro, province of Sancti Spíritus, belongs to the Base Business Unit (UEB) for the Marketing of Agricultural Products, of the Agroindustrial Grain Company of Sur del Jíbaro.
The director of said UEB, Yamilee Gómez Mesa, declared to the ACN that 11 million pesos of the more than 18 million planned have already been executed and that “the advanced state of the construction work (…) will make it possible in the next few days to start the installation of the equipment”.
According to the leader, all the technology of the processing plant comes from Austria and is already on site. In addition, she specified that 80 percent of the electrical energy to be used in the plant will be generated by photovoltaic solar panels that will cover, fundamentally, the demand of the drying oven, where the greatest consumption of electricity will occur.
The plant is located in Empresa Sur del Jíbaro, one of the largest rice fields in Cuba, and will have the capacity to process 20 tons of moringa leaves annually. From a process of drying the leaves, a powder with various nutritional and therapeutic properties will be obtained.
Jorge Enrique Díaz Vidaurreta, entity specialist and future administrator of the new facility, stated that the moringa leaf powder “will be used for pharmaceutical purposes, as a nutritional supplement in the food industry and for export.”
Likewise, he reported that the first three hectares of the tree, of the 13 hectares initially planned, have already been planted around the plant.
In addition to said moringa plant, other processing factories for the plant are being built in Pinar del Río and Santiago de Cuba.
The late dictator Fidel Castro was the greatest promoter of the properties of moringa, a plant native to India that he considered a rich source of food, health and unlimited employment for Cubans.
Moringa was one of the last obsessions of the ruler, who since his retirement dedicated several of his “Reflections” to it in the official press, making this plant one of the priorities of the country’s battered agriculture. He even went so far as to say that the plant had “all types of amino acids.”
In 2018, the Cuban regime created an institution to give continuity and materialize Castro’s ideas on food safety and health, the Science, Technology and Innovation Entity (ECTI) “Sierra Maestra”.
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