Cuban Agrarian Policy to Be Reviewed
HAVANA TIMES, Jan 31 — Cuban lawyers and legal expects will take a look at existing agricultural policy next week and are expected to propose amendments and new regulations, reported the Prensa Latina news agency.
The meeting, set for February 4 and 5 in Havana, is being organized by the National Association of Small Farmers (ANAP) and the Agrarian Law Society of the National Union of Jurists of Cuba.
Nearly 150 participants will analyze agreements and approaches that came out of the ANAP small farmers conference and will examine the legal standards of the sector within the context of economic changes being promoted by the Cuban government.
Issues such as contracted labor for agricultural production, legal counsel for producers, loans, insurance and economic misdoings will be discussed in the sessions.
All that is needed for Cuba to solve its problems with the agricultural sector is to bring back the institution of private productive property rights that was abolished by full state ownership of everything. If small farmers own their own lands, and are allowed to produce for a socialist-conditioned free market, all the problems will go away rapidly and the liberated peasants would make the country prosperous.
The problem of agricultural production lies in the old, mistaken prejudice that private land ownership is necessarily inconsistent with socialism. The tobacco sector wasn’t nationalized, and it has been a boon to socialism. So, why can’t the PCC wake up and realize that the old state monopoly formula is bogus?