MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Cuba calls for an efficient agriculture to cut annual 1.5 billion USD food imports

Vice President Jose Ramón Machado admitted bureaucratic obstacles

Cuba continues to spend more than 1.5 billion US dollars a year on food imports, Vice President Jose Ramon Machado said while urging farmers to boost production, Communist Party daily Granma reported Monday.

Machado told gatherings of farmers that if Cuba does not achieve “a strong, efficient agriculture, it will be unable to increase production to the amount people need,” the paper said.

At the same time, he acknowledged “obstacles and bureaucratic decisions that bog down the distribution and sale of meat, fish, grains and garden produce.”

In several provincial assemblies of the state-run National Association of Small Farmers, or ANAP, Machado has said that the goal of agricultural policy should be ensuring an adequate supply of food in each population centre without excessive transportation costs.

Cuba’s president, General Raul Castro, has said that increasing food production is a matter of “national security,” so as not to be forced to import it at a time of high prices on the international market while the government is suffering from a severe lack of liquidity.

Since he took power in 2006, when older brother Fidel was stricken with a serious illness, Raul Castro has made available thousands of hectares (acres) of idle land to family farmers and cooperatives, among other measures that attempt to increase production. Results are yet to be quantified.