GRANMA.— José Ramón Machado Ventura, second secretary of the Party Central Committee, in this eastern province highlighted the need to combine increased agricultural yields with efficient exploitation of new areas, in order to reach food self-sufficiency and generate opportunities for export.
Over a busy two days in the province’s main agricultural poles, reviewing progress on investment projects, Machado Ventura insisted on the importance of diversifying lines of production and surpassing national demand, since a significant potential market exists for agricultural produce, if excellent quality and availability is ensured.
In conversations with workers and managers, he stressed the priority of obtaining locally a greater variety of products that the country now imports, and discussed variants to ensure taking full advantage of harvests, "because what is not consumed fresh can be industrially processed, at mini-processors, or used as animal feed.”
He called for increasing agricultural yields with the use of select seeds; planting in the optimal season; and the application of innovations and scientific research, emphasizing, at the same time, the importance of collective thinking to adding value to agricultural products, as a way to diversify offers to the population and strengthen the local economy.
Machado Ventura toured areas in Pilon, Niquero, Media Luna, Campechuela, Manzanillo, Yara, Cauto River, Jiguaní, and Bayamo, including plantations of various crops at cooperatives and state enterprises; swine and cattle breeding ranches; a mechanized milking center; a queen bee production site; grain processing plants; rice mills and driers, and other projects. Upon concluding the visits, he expressed satisfaction with progress being made in the province’s agricultural sector, one of the factors considered in awarding Granma the honor of hosting commemorations for National Rebellion Day.
During the visit he was accompanied by José Ramón Monteagudo Ruiz, a member of the Party Secretariat, along with political and governmental authorities in Granma.
