So many restrictions due to the imperialist blockade, the economic crisis, climate change and other vicissitudes had an impact on food production during 2022, that is why in the fertile Cuban land there is still a longing for a structural change in the Ministry of Agriculture so that more unproductive personnel can get into the furrow, an issue that prompted reflection at the Second Provincial Conference of the Union of Agricultural, Forestry and Tobacco Workers (SNTAFT) in Ciego de Ávila.

Maritza Izquierdo Arencibia, trade unionist of the Ceballos Agroindustrial Company, exemplified that there they explain to the workers about the complex economic situation that requires reducing meetings and reports, filling the furrows and reviving industrial productions to have more employment, salary and food for the people.

This issue contains one of the variants aimed at chasing away the economic losses with which 140 companies of the agricultural sector in the country were dismissed during the year, eight of them from Ciego deÁvila with an amount of more than 217 million pesos.

Another alternative is to «re-engineer the movement of the agricultural collectives of which the avilanian territory was the standard bearer and which has come to a halt. There are 97 of these groups to optimize the agricultural labor force, but not all of them have the expected efficiency results as a new model of state management.

There are exceptional cases in the midst of material and financial shortages. The list of losers does not include Empresa Agropecuaria Arnaldo Ramírez for its agro-ecological solutions and other good practices that promote adequate agricultural yields, successes praised by José Antonio Pérez Pérez, member of the National Secretariat of the Central de Cuban Workers’ Union.

However, it was clear in the plenary session that extensive agriculture cannot subsist based only on oxen, hoe, and biological means, especially in entities such as La Cuba with 800 hectares of banana, plus the rest of the area dedicated to other crops.

Nor would labor conquests be sustainable if any aspect is neglected in the attention to the first resource: the human resource. An example of this is the case of the combined meat industry of Turiguanó Genetic Poultry Company, an efficient collective by tradition and nonconformist at present, despite maintaining the variety of special cuts of meat for tourism and its deliveries to social institutions.

We renounce to the payment system because it has been imposed, it is true that we do not comply with the production volume due to the instability of the raw material, however, we are looking for alternatives to direct the plan, but the planned sales are too high», affirms Julio Chávez Pompa, general secretary of the union section of this Base Business Unit.

«We have to solve subjective problems as soon as possible, we are at the doors of the presentation to the labor collectives of the 2023 economy plan and this is an important center of the most efficient entity of livestock farming in Cuba», emphasized Néstor Hernández Martínez, general secretary of SNTAFT in the country.

Niurka Pérez, the highest representative of the Trade Union Bureau in Turiguanó, argued in this regard, that the form of payment was evaluated there because the distribution of the salary cannot be in a linear sense, much less a productive collective earn a scale salary.

The possibility of distributing the profits for high performance to the personnel directly involved in production was evaluated first of all, after the increase in the number of cattle entering the slaughterhouse in the last quarter.

«We have to change the pace in this sector and we need a union that defends the Revolution every day», expressed Liván Izquierdo Alonso, member of the Central Committee and first secretary of the Party in Ciego de Ávila, who mentioned among the tasks in need of dynamism and transformations the confrontation of Cattle Theft and Slaughter of Big Cattle.

In a more favorable environment, the new stage of work is approaching with the securing of electricity and fuels, but with the great challenge of lowering the fever of food prices. According to the report discussed at the conference, all products derived from the land are not fulfilling their production plans.

Therefore, the set of circumstances that surrounded agriculture in the year that is coming to an end, commits the avilanian farmers to take advantage of the opportunities to give back to their plain of wealth those benefits of expanding throughout the provinces the products with the DCballos brand and the bananas of La Cuba, among other items of the agri-food power of the center of the island.