Cuba loosens ban on cattle slaughter, sales of beef, dairy

[El Presidente]

 

Madness 

 

https://www.reuters.com/article/cuba-economy-reform/update-1-cuba-loosens-ban-on-cattle-slaughter-sales-of-beef-dairy-idUSL1N2M71P2

Cuba loosens ban on cattle slaughter, sales of beef, dairy

By Marc Frank

3 MIN READ

HAVANA (Reuters) -Cuba announced that it was loosening a decades-old ban on the slaughter of cattle and sale of beef and dairy as part of agricultural reforms as the Communist-run country battles with food shortages.

FILE PHOTO: Cuban farmhand Bienvenido Castillo, nicknamed Lilly, takes the cows to a pasture on his neighbour's dairy farm in Aranguito near Havana, before sunrise on April 13, 2012. REUTERS/Desmond Boylan/File Photo

 

Ranchers will be allowed to do as they wish with their livestock “after meeting state quotas and always with a guarantee it will not result in a reduction of the herd,” the Communist Party daily, Granma, said late on Tuesday.

 

 

In 1963 the government made it illegal for Cubans to slaughter their cows or sell beef and byproducts without state permission after Hurricane Flora killed 20% of the country’s herd.The number of cattle and milk production improved through 1989 when the Soviet Union collapsed. Since then, the herd has remained stagnant at around 70% of the 1963 level, and powdered milk imports have increased.Farmers can be fined for killing their own cows, leading many to have only one for milk, as if another dies by accident, they face an investigation. Others hide calves in the barn. Still others team up with rustlers, though they face up to 15 years behind bars if caught.

 

This has led to the local joke that you can get more prison time for killing a cow than a human being.

Cuban economists say deregulation of the agricultural sector could help boost production.

The government is expected to announce further agricultural measures in a roundtable discussion on state television as it battles a grave economic crisis that has resulted in food shortages and long lines for even the most basic products such as rice, beans and pork, let alone milk, butter, cheese, yogurt and beef.

The Caribbean island nation imported more than 60% of the food it consumed before new U.S. sanctions on top of the decades-old trade embargo and then the COVID-19 pandemic, which decimated tourism, left it short of cash to import agricultural inputs from fuel and feed to pesticides, let alone food.

 

Economic growth contracted 11% in 2020 and imports 40%, according to the government.

Agricultural production has stagnated in recent years and declined dramatically in 2020, though the government has yet to publish any data.

Last November, the government said it would allow farmers, private traders and food processors to engage in direct wholesale and retail trade if they met government contracts.

The state owns 80% of the arable land and leases most of that to farmers and cooperatives, and until recently had sold them inputs in exchange for up to 90% of their output plus a set margin.

Reporting by Marc Frank; editing by Jonathan Oatis and Marguerita Choy

[Nino]

The local independent Cuban reply :

 

Cuban peasants criticize the government's "neck and tie speech"

Neither the promise of being able to sell beef directly nor the best prices for every liter of milk convince farm workers

14ymedio, Havana | April 15, 2021

Neither the promise of being able to sell beef directly nor the best prices for each liter of milk announced this Tuesday have managed to provoke enthusiasm in the countryside, one of the sectors most affected by the crisis in Cuba. Farmers remain wary of a package of measures that many consider late and insufficient.

Between the initial announcement and the details about the 63 decisions, there was a little more than 24 hours. That day, Esteban Ajete Abascal, leader of the Cuban League of Independent Peasants, preferred not to be a "pessimist by trade" and waited for the Round Table to find out more details. "I no longer even need to eat with all the foods that were mentioned in the program," he answered ironically when he received the call from 14ymedio.

Ajete, who has been working the land for years in Los Palacios, Pinar del Río, and leads an illegal organization that is frowned upon by the authorities, feels that the flexibility package is insufficient and far from the demands of farmers. "Here in this municipality most of the land is practically in disuse," he laments, and blames state management for this situation.

However, the new measures do not include the distribution of these lands to private farmers. "Those farms that function as state agencies have been a proven failure," adds the farmer and activist. "It's the same thing we've seen forever," he insists on this week's announcements.

For Ajete, the proof that behind the vaunted novelty old practices are hidden "is that they keep trying to raise that dead man that is Acopio, but neither they are Jesus Christ nor Acopio is Lázaro", which is why these decisions are explained on official television. they are not a get up and walk for agriculture ", which is currently at" a standstill ".

For the peasant leader it is premature to decree another failure in advance. "Perhaps the reasonable thing is to give him the benefit of the doubt, but this neck and tie speech that we have seen on television is very far from the reality that exists in the fields of Cuba."

"If you ask the peasants what they thought of what was announced by the officials at the Roundtable, possibly few could answer, because while they were speaking, the guajiros, oblivious to the enthusiasm of the bureaucrats, are thinking about how to get a sweet potato to eat that night. "he stresses skeptically.

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https://www.14ymedio.com/cuba/agricultura-campesinos-guajiros_0_3076492328.html