The air that is beginning to cool the environment in the Cuban countryside does not cool the tremendous human heat felt in the furrow of the Arnaldo Ramírez Agricultural Enterprise, in the municipality of Primero de Enero, in the northeastern province of Ciego de Ávila.
The work of the winter planting campaign is red-hot, like the color of the soil there. «Walking takes away the cold…», said a worker named Ana Julia, followed, with her bag in hand, by other workers: Daisy, the young Darelys and the other members of the brigade who work from sunrise to sunset.
They make up the troop of Maceo, the titan of agriculture, director of the only avilanian company that is approaching the end of 2022 without economic losses. Such a feat is the result of day to day work, but in this entity it has the peculiarity of being an achievement with more than a decade of heroic tradition.
Like a hot potato!
The cold planting campaign is on fire. Today, the potato is the main protagonist. Francisco Pérez Cervantes, director of various crops in the Company, informed that they have the commitment to plant the seeds of this type of tuber in 325 hectares, more than 800 of beans and the rest of the plan, until completing in February the 1,700, correspond to cassava, corn, cabbage and other crops mainly of short cycle of that campaign that reports 100, 1 % of compliance to date in that center.
How is it possible to be efficient with limitations of fuel, electricity, fertilizers and other resources to produce, plant more and move towards 2023?
«We fight and overcome with our own alternatives such as biological means and organic fertilizers, for example, we apply with weekly frequency 24 liters per hectare of earthworm humus; and systematicity in cultural attentions to the plantations to achieve greater population in the fields, among other actions.
«When you look at a crop that has organic fertilizer applied to it, you notice a 20-30% difference in the vegetative state compared to one that is not supplied with anything. The key is not to let yourself be defeated or discouraged by the lack of a certain input».
For the agronomist Carlos Blanco Sánchez, specialist of the work team of the Minister of Agriculture, «the collective of Arnaldo Ramírez has an admirable experience that extends to the whole country with the use of vermiculture not only as fertilizer, but also in the protection against fungi», he emphasized.
One ox does not pull
As the saying goes, the Arnaldo Ramírez alone will not be able to pull the food sovereignty and nutritional education program in Ciego de Ávila that was recently discussed in the National Assembly of People’s Power.
It is also necessary to join the other companies, with a view not only to overcome the economic losses of more than 180 million pesos concentrated in eight entities of the agricultural system, but also to take off in the sowing of the current cold season, which until last October registered 86% of compliance, only in grains is the planned materialized.
The agricultural entity, near the town of Violeta, is a reflection of what President Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez stated in the recent sessions of the Cuban Parliament: The first system to be strengthened in each municipality is the production of food with the least possible expenditure of foreign currency, applying agroecology and generalizing these good agricultural practices.
