Havana, Cuba.-Cuba encourages local food output to substitute imports and ensure a better supply of fresh products to families, according to the Cuban Agriculture Minister (MINAG), Gustavo Rodriguez.

He acknowledged that in recent years there were successful agricultural projects focused on municipal self-sustaining, but in many cases it lacked a comprehensive vision of how to make them more sustainable over time.

These were isolated examples that did not lead to generalize some insights in favor of local management, Mr. Rodriguez said before the Food-Farming Commission of the National Assembly of People’s Power.

As stated by Rodriguez, MINAG system should increase its technical support for territories with a view to the design of comprehensive agricultural production plans, considering the agricultural and industrial sectors, as well as the support for livestock unit and small livestock.

Among the favorable experiences, he distinguished the establishment of food-producing facilities in different municipalities, in order to jointly deal with the environmental demands, the water availability and other consumables, the demand of labor force and the improvement of the social infrastructure in the communities.

A key view for measuring the effectiveness of such plans should be the amount of vegetable, fruit pounds that each municipality manages to deliver to its inhabitants per month, he said.

According to Rodriguez, it is also necessary to enhance local production of nutrients for animal consumption, as well as pork, sheep-goat and rabbit breeding.

In this regard, lawmakers asked the MINAG representatives for some detailed information on the institutional efforts to counter deficiencies in the production of animal feeding in order to substitute purchases abroad and the consequent expenditure of foreign currencies.