• Submitted by: manso
• Business and Economy
• 10 / 20 / 2010

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Agence France-Presse. First Posted 12:59:00 10/20/2010. HAVANA, Cuba—Keen to foster greater domestic food production, Cuba has vastly expanded a nationwide network of  farm supply stores, an official said Tuesday.

"We started some months back with about 10 products (boots, gloves, machetes) and now we have almost 20. We are hoping to get 40 products by this year," said interior ministry official Arturo Vazquez.

"We need to get these products closer to producers. So far the reaction has been great," Vazquez said on state television, adding that 1,100 stores were now up and running.

Before the shops were introduced, potential farm producers had to buy even simple farm supplies in hard currency—a tremendous hardship in a country where the monthly salary is the equivalent of about 17 dollars.

Machetes, for example, might cost $12 in a hard-currency store. At the new government shops they are 80 pesos or $3.3.

President Raul Castro is trying to slash the massive percentage of the government budget that goes on food imports.

In 2008 his government started handing out fallow state land to Cubans willing to farm it. But the popularity of the program was undercut by farm supplies being in extremely short supply.

More than 60 percent of Cuba's arable land, which totals 1.6 million hectares (3.9 million acres) lies fallow, in a Caribbean nation roughly the size of Portugal, or the US state of Virginia.

Source: http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/breakingnews/world/view/