Fifty producers from the Frank País García, Angel Bouza and Osmel Gonzalvo Credit and Services Cooperatives, belonging to the Manuel Tames Municipality, in Guantanamo Province, are currently receiving components for 52 irrigation systems to benefit fruit plantations and various crops.
The resources are part of the imports made through the international collaboration project Sustainable Agroforestry Development, an option for women’s empowerment, sponsored by the Spanish solidarity organization Euskadi-Cuba, from the Basque Country.
The engineer, Pedro Garrido Valiente, coordinator of the task for the Association of Agricultural Technicians and Engineers, said that the project guarantees employment for a hundred women and improvements in the working conditions and in the management of the cooperatives.
He says that two carpentry shops were also installed for the manufacture of boxes and tools, and the arrival of two tractors with trailers, equipment for small-industry, points of sale, such as refrigerators, is expected, a load that is already in the port of Mariel, in Havana.
Benefits from the international collaboration project Sustainable Agroforestry Development
Vega Grande, with water, good soil and equipment, is expected to become a productive hub for the cultivation of grains, that is aimed at replacing imports, mainly. Photos: Lorenzo Crespo Silviera
“I was told that with corn harvest could earn of up to 20 thousand pesos, and it is true,” says Alberto. Photos: Lorenzo Crespo Silviera
Alberto Ramírez Griñán, one of the workers at the Vega Grande Farm, was forced to change the microjet banana he had cultivated his life to, for corn plantation, and was assured that he could have harvests of up to 20 thousand pesos.
The land, he cultivates with his wife and a son, extends over six hectares under irrigation even before the new system, where he plants mostly the corn, and some various crops, currently cassava and sweet potato.
Ángel Píriz Bonot with two big oxen, Centinela and Vigilante, he is plowing land surrounded by the banana fields.
He has seven hectares, mostly dedicated to the cultivation of bananas, plantains, cassava, fruit and corn, all under irrigation for three years as part of the Palmas project.
With information taken from the weekely Lomerio
