WFP implements project to benefit farmers in Holguín

The World Food Program (WFP), together with the International Fund for Agricultural Development, develpos the Gibara Verde x Ciento project, for the benefit of farmers in this municipality of Holguín province, through the delivery of working tools and training courses.

Luis Plácido Ortega Izquierdo, national officer of the program, informed that the proposal is valid for replicating the project and creating a local model on a small scale of how a territory can model of how a territory can become self-sustaining, whose first step in its implementation was to associate forms of production with social safety nets.

Gibara was the region chosen because of the special situation faced by its farmers, since it is a rural but at the same time coastal municipality, affected by drought and saline intrusion, where they were also provided with a set of educational and technological resources aimed at improving crop yields, he said.

Ortega Izquierdo explained that there are still some items to be delivered, such as irrigation systems, motor cultivators, agricultural implements, electric tricycles, a posture house for semi-protected cultivation, cages and other accessories used in animal husbandry.

With one year of performance, the feasibility of the plan has been demonstrated, which has benefited, with 37 tons of more than 20 agricultural products, 13 institutions, including canteens of the Family Care System, semi-boarding schools and children’s day care centers, which demonstrates the commitment of the five participating cooperatives, he said.

Among the achievements are a varied and nutritious diet for vulnerable population groups which, after the consolidation of similar experiences in missions carried out in Brazil and China, the extension for six more months of the project in Cuba, which began in November last year, has been requested.

The WFP has been collaborating for 60 years in Cuba, where it promotes and supports the resilience of national production systems in order to improve the food and nutritional security of vulnerable groups.

With information by Claudia Laura Rodríguez – ACN / Translated by Radio Angulo