GAF
Santiago cooperative shows results almost three months after the Ordering Task
To recover more areas to plant, save resources, diversify productions and think differently, he has called for the implementation of the Ordering Task in the Carlos Manuel de Céspedes Agricultural Production Cooperative (CPA), from the province of Santiago de Cuba.
The 89 associates of the CPA -with more than 1,0106 hectares (ha), most of them for coffee, and located in the municipality of Tercer Frente- reconsidered new ways of making the land produce to be sustainable, contribute to the self-sufficiency of the town and face, in the midst of COVID-19, the financial, economic and commercial blockade of the United States against Cuba. In the middle of the Sierra Maestra, they broke land with teams of oxen and an old tractor to plow, cleared of weeds and parasitic trees, lands where nowadays are planted with sweet potato, plantain with intercropped yucca, chili pepper, aubergine, pumpkin and others on a smaller scale, as well as condiments flourish. and vegetables, without neglecting the coffee. Pedro Cabrales, president of the CPA, was called crazy when at the end of 2020, when training them to establish that task of the country, he decided to open a space in that tangle of dense vegetation to diversify productions and achieve more yields, without fertilizers or irrigation systems. The Carlos Manuel de Céspedes has economic results due to the coffee and the protection of a development program that contributed with modern technologies and the increase in the purchase price of those who produce it, now at 270 Cuban pesos (CUP) per can, said Cabrales. They analyzed the decisions in their assembly and for that unit they decided that the profits from the grain harvest, this time, are to sustain the various crops within the transformations required by the regulation (monetary and exchange rate) and to ensure the advance payment of more of two thousand pesos to its workers in order to sustain necessary productions. Cabrales said that they will enter more than five million CUP per coffee in the current harvest, and they calculate two million in the new banana farm that grows in the areas rescued from the undergrowth in what was a virgin land, well although somewhat remote. He mentioned to achieve this, the saving of the inputs they generate, such as baskets, tackle, seeds and limes, which hardly enter the country, also the use of teams of oxen as alternatives for the transfer of coffee, food and workers, to use less fuel, while still offering cultural attentions. The hardest side are the various crops, with better prices and the need to promote them for the people, the self-sufficiency of the Cooperative and the municipality, and it is also a source of secure employment at the end of the coffee season, Cabrales told the Cuban Agency News on a tour of your beautiful CPA. Jesús López, under the strong sun of the mountains, said that he takes care of the recovered areas with 11 field men under his command; they live in nearby houses and their means of animal traction were manufactured and earn their wages well, he said. Although the work is hard, they consider it normal, due to the custom of those who were born there, and because the land gives everything with the care and love that you put into it, López added.
