José Alberto González Sánchez, president of the CPA Paquito González, from the municipality of Baraguá, receives an honorary degree.

Leadership was not withdrawn after Edelio or Pipo, as he was better known as the founding president, retired from the Paquito González Agricultural Production Cooperative (CPA) in the municipality of Baraguá, in the southeast of the province of Ciego de Ávila.

Engineer José Alberto González Sánchez, who started out as a livestock specialist, helped to collect 520,000 litres of cow’s milk in one year and took over the presidency of the production base, which celebrated four and a half decades of existence on 24 April, took over the reins.

The organisation has been profitable since its creation, Vanguardia Nacional more than 20 years ago, and is currently the most comprehensive in the Cuban cooperative movement.

«These achievements are distinguished by the quality of our 343 members, among them our qualified staff: six university graduates and more than 25 mid-level technicians, human resources are a priority here,» González Sánchez emphasises.

Being different

When the monetary order arrived, the accounts did not add up at the CPA. José Alberto argues that «the diagnosis gave us an economic loss of 2 million pesos, when comparing the high prices of inputs with the sales of our productions, but we started to rotate the land better, to do other things differently, until we reached 6 million pesos in profits in 2021».

He said that profits grew in 2022 to 8 million; and 27 million in 2023. These dividends are not favoured by inflation, but on the basis of more food production, as the founding cooperative of the productive political movement for the 100,000 quintals per year of viands, vegetables, grains and fruits.

«We have reached 200,000 on different occasions. Now, with the country’s financial limitations for fertiliser imports and other resources, we are exceeding 120,000 quintals, with the prospect of increasing agricultural yields because we are benefiting from a loan from Saudi Arabia», explained José Alberto.

He argued that they have 15 central pivot machines for water irrigation, drip systems in operation and some of this type in the final phase of assembly, with which they should complete 135 hectares dedicated to the production of bananas.

Bananas are not the only crop with potential. The collective covers the whole range of miscellaneous crops on more than a thousand hectares, on whose very fertile soils the potato and bean harvests stood out during the first four months of this year.

To ensure that these lands continue to produce efficiently, they are implementing a seed programme and are building an organic fertiliser production centre on their land, with a view to applying earthworm humus to all the plantations.

The germination of a dream

Planting tubes is not a matter for cooperative members. However, they have also planted them and are reaping the fruits of a newly developed aqueduct for the benefit of some 1,000 inhabitants of 300 houses.

«The objective was also to guarantee a sufficient supply of quality water to the health clinic, the school, the shop, the recreational centre, the offices and the workshop, among other facilities built in different stages, and improved with the support of the peasant community, in homage to the 65th anniversary of the Agrarian Reform Law, which will be celebrated on May 17, the Day of the Peasant», emphasised José Alberto, who is a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba, member of the National Bureau of the Association of Small Farmers (Anap).