Cuba's Ministry of Agriculture outlines priorities for the sector in 2025

 HAVANA, Cuba, Mar 11 (ACN) The countries highest leadership urged to define strategies in line with the Government Program to correct distortions and boost the economy with the necessary political control and assurance during the annual assessment of the Ministry of Agriculture (Minag).

The meeting was headed by Miguel Diaz-Canel Bermudez, first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC) and president of the country, Political Bureau members Manuel Marrero Cruz, prime minister, and Salvador Valdes Mesa, vice president of the country, as well as Jorge Luis Tapia Fonseca and Ricardo Cabrisas Ruiz, deputy prime ministers, and Jose Ramon Monteagudo Ruiz, head of the PCC's Agri-Food Department.

Marrero Cruz referred to the dissatisfaction that persists in not achieving the productive levels demanded by the population and the need to strengthen the structures, especially at the municipal level, and the leading role that the agency should assume in this task.

Cuban Premier also called for the restitution of legality with firmness and determination in the daily fight against illegalities and crimes detected in the countryside of the Caribbean nation.

On this matter, the head of government pointed out that the country's top leadership is currently discussing a new sanctioning framework for violators in such delicate matters as cattle ownership, the use of usufruct lands, and non-compliance with priority plans such as livestock, pork and milk and egg deliveries, among other items.

Regarding contracting, he acknowledged progress in this process but insisted on the compliance and quality of what was contracted, as well as the verification of the agreed indicators with respect to the available capacities, in order to avoid cases of subcontracting that generate new distortions.

He also stressed the importance of increasing the state collection in order to influence prices, which are speculative and abusive in certain agricultural products, and as a way to counteract the diversion of resources and illegal commercialization.

In the same way, it is necessary to strengthen food production in order to achieve municipal self-sufficiency, which involves guaranteeing from the local structures the areas for various crops, along with the organoponic, urban agriculture and incorporating more entities to the tasks of self-consumption, he emphasized.

Marrero Cruz also called for making progress in the correct exploitation of the land, consolidating the operation of the municipal agricultural companies, reversing with follow-up the slow results in terms of foreign investment, making better use of cooperation funds and identifying, together with the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Foreign Investment, local potentialities for export, among other priorities.

For his part, Ydael Perez Brito, Minister of Agriculture, deepened in the actions implemented by the agency to develop infrastructure and technological and productive bases, such as the transition to irrigation systems that use renewable energy and agroecology.

He pointed out that in order to achieve the desired productive results, there is a need for greater control and accompaniment in land use management, livestock ownership, product marketing and issues related to non-payment and banking.

These actions will bring us a little closer to fulfilling the high governmental responsibility of implementing the Food Security and Nutritional Education Law, which should govern the development of the sector in correspondence with the needs of the population, he added.