The annual plan, which was at 57% until the beginning of November, will not be fulfilled in 2024
14ymedio, Havana, 6 December 2024 — Milk production in Villa Clara remains at rock bottom. From January to mid-November of this year, the industry in the province barely reached 57% of the annual plan, some 19,687,000 liters. The deficit is an amount “difficult to overcome in the remainder of the year,” says an article in the local newspaper Vanguardia, which blames the low production on the cattle breeders.
As has become customary for the government, the newspaper attacks producers, accusing them of seeking higher profits in the informal market, undermining state production. It also points out that “many breeders aim to exceed their sales commitments, while others violate them. There are plenty of examples.”
“There are producers who have accumulated months without daily deliveries to meet the contracted plans,” explains Vanguardia, which insists that many cattle farmers “blame administrative mismanagement, even poor contracts and even inefficient calculations of lactation periods” to justify low production.
“There are producers with accumulated months without daily collections to meet the contracted schedules”
Other secondary causes, the newspaper says, are “fines, forced purchases, termination of usufruct [contracts] in areas under exploitation, confiscations, administrative measures and cold periods in which cows give less milk,” as well as the diversion of feed to the informal market.
Regarding the storage of milk in some areas of the province, 14ymedio published last October that in the municipality of Camajuaní an old house was used to refrigerate the product. The measure, which on paper seems positive to help the cattle farmers, actually seeks to prevent the illegal sale of the product in Villa Clara. To delay the delivery of the milk in that town, the farmers claimed that there were no appropriate conditions for preservation, since they had to transport the milk more than four kilometers to take it to a cooling chamber.
Producers, however, know that they can make more profits ‘on the left’ [under the table], even if that means risking fines or losing their animals. The maximum the state pays is 38 pesos for each litre of milk in excess of the basic plan, while on the informal market it reaches 80 pesos.
Vanguardia, with a sense of hope, highlights that, on the other hand, “there are municipalities where ranchers show their faces to display their smiles.”
Last year the province failed to collect 21 million liters
“After fulfilling their annual contracts, and despite late payments due to exceeding compliance, [those ranchers] still continue with habitual milk collections,” says the media, which just a few lines below returns to the attack against the “other” producers: “Some, after reaching their commitment, even without achieving it, turn a blind eye and put up objections… There are always those ones and the others…” it assures.
The weak milk supply in Villa Clara is nothing new. Last year, the province lost 21 million liters.
As if that were not enough, the figures are plummeting. Last October, 60,000 liters of milk were collected daily in Villa Clara, just 40% of what was collected a year earlier, when the average was 150,000. According to the State, the cattle farmers had accumulated a debt of more than 10 million liters last month, an amount that continued to increase, according to official journalist Jesús Álvarez López, reporter for the provincial radio station CMHW, which – in an article titled ‘Merchants of disorder’ also in the milk – attacked the producers and those who participate in the informal market.
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