World Food Programme focuses on resilient agriculture in Cuban province

LAS TUNAS, Cuba, Nov 20 (ACN) The strengthening of the local food system from a sovereign and resilient perspective stands out as the essential objective of the four projects that the World Food Program (WFP) materialized in 2023 in the eastern province of Las Tunas.

Benefiting a wide variety of productive activities in at least four municipalities in the province, the humanitarian organization focused its assistance and advice on educational, health and service centers.

Yordanka Fonseca Quevedo, WFP monitor in the territory, referred exclusively to the Cuban News Agency that the support to the food systems was especially focused on the municipality of Manati, with attention to a children's daycare center, a semi-boarding school, a primary school and a special school, as well as 10 units of the Family Attention System.

We work with more than 15 producers in that northern territory, added Fonseca Quevedo, to whom we supply technology and work accessories to facilitate and increase agricultural activities; the equipment ranges from motorized cultivators for surface soil tillage, to fumigation backpacks, scales and transportation equipment.

The PMA is also working on the installation of posture houses for producers' self-supply, as well as on the construction of irrigation systems and new semi-protected areas for planting various crops.

The projects carried out by the program are oriented to agricultural security and crop monitoring through satellite images, strengthening against natural disasters in conjunction with the Korea International Cooperation Agency -Korea Koica-, in addition to the Sustainable School Feeding project in the municipalities of Puerto Padre and Colombia.

Jointly with the Ministry of Labor and Social Security in Las Tunas, the WFP benefits people in a state of economic vulnerability with the delivery of food supplements since October, a practice that they intend to extend in the coming months, as indispensable assistance in the search for a future of nutritional sustainability.

With a presence in Cuba for more than six decades, the program has been strengthening the productive forms of Las Tunas from an effective perspective of social protection against disasters and citizen participation in food systems, with emphasis on supporting the availability, access and consumption of diversified food throughout the entire geography of the province.