• Submitted by: manso
• Business and Economy
• 04 / 20 / 2011

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Exceeding the expectations of planners, some 143,000 farmers have received long-term leases to fallow state land since the government began a land distribution program two years ago, Pedro Olivera, director of the Agriculture Ministry’s Centro de Control de la Tierra, told foreign reporters during a press briefing at the 6th Congress of the Communist Party of Cuba.

There were more than 165,000 applications.

Some 15,000 new applications are currently being processed. Applicants receive their land within 78 to 108 days, he said.

Of 6.6 million hectares of arable land on the island, 1.868 million hectares are fallow. Nearly 1.1 million hectares of the fallow land has been handed over to private farmers and cooperative; some 100,000 hectares were leased by state farms. The leasable land left is more difficult to access, Olivera said.

Nearly 1 million hectares of the newly leased land is already in use. Twenty-five percent of that land is used for various crops, 53 percent for cattle, and 8 percent for rice.

More than 70 percent of the new farmers have no previous agriculture experience, Olivera said, and more than 35 percent are younger than 35.

Source: www.cubastandard.com/2011/04/18/privatization-push-in-agriculture-nearin...