Despite its inefficiencies, the state-owned storage company has opened an online store in Pinar del Rio

Collection Company, One of the least efficient agricultural systems in the regime Dozens of farmers have complained Thousands of tons of product lost due to poor managementThe El Viandero online store opened in Pinar del Río “with the aim of bringing its products closer to the people and supporting the computerization process of Cuban society,” according to the official newspaper. Granmaand the crisis in Cuba’s countryside points to this entity as one of the culprits.

Yarisbel López Pérez, General Manager of Acopio in Pinar del Río The product will be delivered within 24 hours. In the main city of Pinar del Rio, it is provided free of charge by a person who owns a tricycle and several electric scooters.”

collection Farmers are owed millions of pesos and are being blamed for government mismanagement and implementation The focus of these measures is not to increase production but to improve the level of control.

In this context, the Minister of the Department, Ydael Pérez Brito, recognises that: Cuban agriculture is located in Very poor conditionssince 2023 is catastrophic, this situation continues until 2024, In addition to recognizing “how far the organization is from solving these and other tasks,” López Pérez noted that El Viandero offers a wide range of products, including food, vegetables, cereals, fruit trees, industrial products and semi-finished products.

The regime has fallen behind in the star product of the new service, which is designed to compete with private virtual stores. There are scarce resources such as rice, beans, noodles, and salt on the island. High price.

Cuban agronomist Fernando Funes-Monzot has repeatedly stated that “Cuban agriculture does not need to produce more food” because ““Fifty percent of crops grown today are lost before they reach consumers.”

In this sense, in recent years, both the state and independent media have published several cases of Acopio wasting thousands of tons of agricultural products essential to the basic Cuban diet, usually because they were not collected or distributed on time. 128 quintals of mangoes, in Camagüey, 200 quintals of tomatoesin Artemisa, 8,000 boxes of mangoes, and in Santiago de Cuba, there were other significant losses.

“Even in the face of scarcity, they can terminate contracts with producers and not harvest the contracted crops. As if the state today could allow itself to be so apathetic. Moreover, A highly inefficient entity. The only verifiable positive balance for Acopio is the provision of agricultural products to the population, which couldn’t be worse.””, user Raúl Brito commented in a publication published by the State Collection Company on Facebook.

On this issue, Economist Pedro Monreal believes In the near future, a step forward for Cuban agriculture would be to wrest power from the Acopio monopoly and “ Increased privatization of agricultureIn terms of ownership, this would be justified given the high weight of the private sector in management. Agriculture is the only economic sector where state-owned companies have not been major players for some time,” he noted.