The conclave, which will analyse the burning issues and come up with proposals to address them, “will be an enormous challenge,” Felix Duartes, ANAP president, said during a meeting with the press at the Aristides Estevez Credit and Services Cooperative in western Havana.

It will be an open, frank and constructive debate on the difficulties facing the Cuban peasantry and its production today, from which “we will emerge more united and stronger, as is the motto of the congress”, the ANAP leader stressed. This organization was created on 17 May 1961 as a result of the agrarian reforms (1959 and 1960) that distributed land to the rural dispossessed.

ANAP closed 2024 with 3,198 cooperatives, including 807 agricultural production cooperatives and 2,391 credit and service cooperatives, bringing together 403,942 members, of whom 320,299 are men and 83,643 women, in addition to their families.

This group does not include workers in the farms managed by the Ministry of Agriculture, the agricultural business groups or the Azcuba business group.

ANAP’s small producers and cooperatives cover 45 per cent of Cuba’s arable land, however it generates from 70 to 80 per cent of the production that has an impact on the Cuban economy and directly on the population’s food supply, the farmers’ leader pointed out.

For example, he said, they produce more than 95% of the country’s tobacco, a sector in which the aim is to recover by 2027 the production that existed before the pandemic and the hurricanes that affected it, and to achieve the cultivation of more than 20,000 hectares, with the benefit of the investment policy of the TabaCuba Group and the application of renewable energies.

At present, they are affected by the lack of inputs, the scarce renewal of machinery and tools, the almost total absence of fertilisers and insecticides due to the economic war of the US government on Cuba, and the persistent non-payment of production by the State-run companies that receive it. Added to this are fuel shortages, inadequate power generation and the impact of inadequate infrastructure for the effective application of banking policies and restrictions on bank withdrawals.

These and other issues, such as concerns about the high prices of available inputs, greater rigour in combating and eliminating the negative effects of illegality, theft, cattle slaughter and other crimes, will be topics of discussion at the Congress, Duartes anticipated.

However, the peasant and cooperative members of the association have shown their willingness and readiness to strengthen their unity around the revolutionary government in the municipal and provincial assemblies held so far, the ANAP leader said.

The provincial meetings, where the territorial leaderships and the candidates for the Congress will be determined, with the participation of 400 delegates and 100 guests, as well as the candidates for the ANAP National Committee, will end in April and before the 30th of that month all the provincial delegations will be flagged.

The participants will also have to elect or ratify the members of the National Bureau of the Association.

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