According to news of Cuban television, the vice president urged producers and cooperative forms of management in that eastern province of Granma to deploy greater efforts for the “recovery of the popular rice program.”

In this sense, Valdés evaluated there the implementation of the rice program, conceived until 2030, which plans to return Granma to the status of “largest cereal-producing province” in the Caribbean country, stated the journalistic report.

Ten of the 13 municipalities in the province use manual tillage techniques as a form of alternative grain production that avoids the use of large volumes of fuel and agricultural inputs, the country’s vice president learned.

For this purpose, the senior government official on the island recommended involving more people in the planting and harvesting of rice, which requires training them in techniques and methods of production of this important food item, he pointed out.

The vice president suggested producers in the province, order the plantings according to the water availability and infrastructure in each territory, a function of directing the process that, he recalled, corresponds to local agricultural companies.

Valdés indicated to agricultural authorities and local producers the increase in areas for this crop, the recovery of machinery, the use of biofertilizers and biopesticides and the introduction of varieties more resistant to Climate Change, the television stated.

At the meeting with the farmers, in which the head of agriculture, Idael Pérez, and the main political and government authorities of Granma were also present.

The Cuban vice president recalled that Cuba spends significant sums of money on cereal imports. In this context, Valdés asserted, the increase in national cereal production to guarantee the regulated family basket would help the island’s economy, besieged by the genocidal blockade policy of the United States government.

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