Starting March, the producers of strawberries from the Santa Cruz Cooperative, in San José de Ocoa, will write a new page in the history of the Dominican Republic, as they will harvest more than 20,000 pounds of fruit per week.
The producers received an $800,000 dollar, loan to produce strawberries, in a surprise visit by President Danilo Medina, which would directly benefit 1,500 people in normal times, but thanks to the high production, will help employ another 500 people, said Osiris Feliz, producer and manager of the Cooperative.
The marketing of the strawberry is assured via a strategic alliance signed the 125 members of the cooperative with NikayBio-Process, a processor and distributor of fruit.
The strawberry harvest in Ocoa could last between eight months and a year. The area's weather conditions, its over 800 meters high altitude, and the cold water of the central mountains make it possible for producers to grow gourmet strawberries.
"The Cooperative is reborn with the funding from the president," he said while thanking the training that producers received from the technical part of the Special Fund for Agricultural Development (FEDA). Feliz participated in Channel 4's morning program, Ojala, with the President of the organization, Estenio Manuel Diaz and Cesar Aybar, president of the NikayBio Process Company.
There, he stated that the FEDA provided them with training to produce organic strawberry, which is the goal of the cooperative.
Meanwhile, the president of NikayBio-Process said the company had received $425,000 dollars in funding from the FEDA to purchase trucks and cooling and freezing rooms for the fruits they process.
He said NikayBio-Process had employed an additional 40 people to process the strawberry and that, if things continued this way, they would employ another 150 people from San Cristobal, where the company is located, by the end of the year.
Source: diariodigital.com.do