Cuba Farmers Suffer Gov. Contract Breaches
HAVANA TIMES, Dec 13 — Orlando Lugo Fonte, the president of the National Association of Small Farmers (ANAP), revealed today in an interview with the Granma newspaper that the country has still not paid between $2.5 million and $3 million owed to its farmers.
According to the official, work is being done to set up new policies and procedures for the procurement of agricultural produce. These modifications will come into effect in 2012 and will stipulate the prices of contracted products.
The problems in contracting, accounts receivable and accounts payable are not new to the Cuban economy. Nonetheless, the situation has improved over previous years, where there were cases of debts of around 50 million pesos ($2 million USD) a month, said the farm leader.
All such problems afflicting small farmers would disappear under a socialist cooperative republic. Private property rights and their corollary, a socialist-conditioned trading market, would be established and respected. In agriculture–as in other branches of the economy–individuals would take care of their own affairs, without corrupt, bureaucratic dictate. Socialist planning would work through market forces, not try to replace such forces by the decisions of bureau functionaries or political sectarians. All this of course would mean throwing out Marxist statism as the official ideology, and returning socialism to its original, cooperative roots.