GAF

Productive drought on fertile lands

When last April in the country the approval of 63 measures aimed at stimulating food production was announced (of which 30 were considered a priority)

Productive drought on fertile lands
24 Sep 2021

This incentive to give birth to the land was welcomed throughout the island. more urgently and nip the prevailing sterility in many fertile areas in the bud However, more than four months later, in the Cauto-La Yaya productive pole, belonging to the Agricultural Company of the municipality of Jiguaní, in the province of Granma, such provisions have not reached the pace demanded by the national economy, nor have they translated into the necessary productive take-off that allows better supply of pallets and agricultural markets. In this wide area of ??land nestled in areas of the rural communities of La Jatía, La Yaya and Dos Ríos, and shared between three base business units, a credit and services cooperative, and a basic cooperative production unit, the harvests should generate more products and fewer headaches. At least this is what is expected of a productive enclave blessed not only by the fertility of a soil stretched, for many kilometers, along the imposing Cauto river and near the Contramaestre, but also by the technological availability existing there (nine electric irrigation machines, with a central pivot, which give enviable coverage to 276 hectares), 12 tractors and the diversity of various crops, fruit and citrus, totaling nearly 700 hectares in operation. However, the reality at the foot of the furrow is far from what in theory La Yaya could contribute to the agricultural balance of the province and other territories of the country, with the systematic delivery of viands - mainly donkey bananas, its permanent product - and of other short-cycle lines. This was confirmed to Granma by several of the state workers and usufructuary linked to the pole, who feel and suffer for this land, where the historical instability with the availability of water and the use of irrigation machines, as well as organizational and structural deficiencies, they continue to be limiting that prevent them from taking full advantage of their potential. PRODUCTIVE DROUGHT, HAVING WATER? Although it is true that, despite financial difficulties and problems with access to inputs for agricultural management, the Jiguaní Agricultural Company has experienced a discreet leap in its corporate purpose in 2021, after guaranteeing at the Cauto pole– La Yaya planting sweet potato, yucca, banana and fruit trees, highlighting among them the fruit bomb - together with the recovery of roads and areas to promote the citrus program - the figures and profits obtained so far this year also indicate that it remains a long way to go to get closer to efficiency. In the words of José Luis Machado Pérez, who took over the reins of La Yaya about a year ago –with the inheritance of long-standing inadequacies– the main obstacle that during numerous calendars has slowed the development of the productive pole has been and is the lack of stability and quality of agricultural irrigation, despite having the water demanded by the crops. One of the edges of said situation was addressed by this newspaper on July 8, 2011, with the report ¿Máquinas para irr la unproduividad? center pivot, after a decade of being installed in the pole. Today, when another ten years have passed since that controversial and enlightening publication, the management of mechanized irrigation, although not the essential cause of the low yields at the pole, has not ceased to be part of the problem. «That the electric central pivot machines (of which only eight are inactive, due to a temporary break, and five, which requires a major repair that already has the equipment), do not perform as well as they should, depends on these moments of the constant breakdowns that occurred at the La Jatía pumping station ”, explained the director of the pole, Machado Pérez. This station, he added, is the one with the highest installed capacity in the pole (there is another pumping site in La Yaya), on whose stability several central pivot machines depend, the gravity irrigation of almost 300 hectares of burro plantain, and the crops of about 20 usufructuaries. «They have been in operation for more than 40 years and the deterioration of the main pipe is remarkable; in addition to the fact that the distance that separates the pumping station from the areas under irrigationIt is 13 kilometers of canal, through whose leaks more than 20% of the water is lost. «To this is added that the electrical flow has remained very unstable this year, with just seven or eight hours of execution of the 19 planned for pumping, which prevents, most of the time, that the channels reach the top of their capacity and deliver, with sufficiency, the water that the irrigation machines need, ”said Machado Pérez. Behind these deficiencies, which already accumulate a long history of approaches "at various levels", according to workers and managers of the pole, the cultivation of the burro banana is affected with special emphasis, lacking for several months of the vital liquid. “In order to irrigate the banana plantations, mechanized irrigation has to be supplied first, so it hurts to see how the country and the province's leadership have supported us to recover marabou-infected areas and manage to have them planted, and yet in the end they do not yield enough ", commented the manager of one of La Yaya's banana farms, Yobernis Fuentes Ramos, while showing Granma, worried, part of the 40 hectares of plantain under development," which should contribute more than 400 quintals per month and the real does not exceed one hundred, "he added. Faced with this complex scenario, Diosvany Armas del Toro, director of the Jiguaní Agricultural Company, assures that the entity has not stood idly by, even when the solutions found do not provide the permanence of water at the pole. "This year we have already repaired the slate, the engine and several of the station's pipes, while we have looked for alternatives, such as expanding the lagoon with pumping, but this is not what solves the problem," acknowledged the manager. However, Armas del Toro knows that in the alliances and in the productive chains with other entities new alternatives can be found that allow to reverse the panorama in La Yaya, as part of the facilities that have been granted to the socialist state enterprise. He said that, despite the situation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, they have already taken the first steps to contract services and equipment with entities from the municipalities of Bayamo, in Granma, and Moa, in Holguín; but the reality of the fields in La Yaya requires greater haste in any of the efforts, in order to raise yields. MORE ARMS TO SOW AND HARVEST Coupled with the real water deficit, in Cauto-La Yaya there are other limitations that threaten its better productive take-off. For example, it is no secret that one of the main problems facing the agricultural sector is that of the labor force, as evidenced in the extensive plots of the pole. To guarantee the sowing and harvesting, the managers emphasize that they have relied on the mobilizations called by the Party and the Government, and some state entities, taking into account that the workforce they have does not meet their needs. And although, as an alternative, there is a contract with the Ministry of the Interior to employ inmates, because the pole is in an intricate area and the uprising of the surrounding communities showed that the potential available in working age is very low, which It is true that, for those who cultivate the land there, living and working conditions have a lot to improve. In the opinion of the usufructuaries Luis Enrique Duanis, Jorge Luis Biquillón, Juan Manuel Capote and César Guerrero, it is necessary to resolve, once and for all, the non-payment to the producers (which "stimulates" the illegal sale of some crops); to multiply the rigor on the control of the animals that damage the plantations; better qualify the forces that operate the irrigation machines, and stimulate the workers in the state sector to come out of the accommodative lethargy of "going to the fields for a few hours," just to mark the card that justifies the salary. "Regardless of all the rolls that we have, we are sure that, with the resources that exist in the pole, we could produce much more if it improves labor and technological discipline, and the organization," they all considered. The awakening of the great Cauto-La Yaya pole (still more potential than productive, judging by the vast extension and the fruits still insufficient), would respond to the urgent food demand of the country, would create the bases to diversify its development and - although it seems a moral question - the long sanbenito of being fertile land between rivers, condemned to productive drought, would be shaken.


Comments


Leave a comment

Click on image to change code
Validation error occured. Please enter the fields and submit it again.
Thank You ! Your email has been delivered.

Colaboradores

Facebook
Twitter
Canal Agroforestal
RSS