Ciego de Avila is working on a project to plant more than 10 thousand hectares of tropical fruits by December 2020 in order to increase food production, replace imports, and export its products to agricultural markets abroad.
The Ceballos Agroindustrial Company is in charge of this program, which is part of a strategy to redress the damage caused by hurricane Irma in this territory, stated engineer Wilver Bringas Fernandez, the director general of the entity.
The program includes the planting of mango, guava interspersed among other plants, and MD-2 pineapple. The program has already begun in the fertile lands of the Centre and South of the province, which have nurseries, machinery, specialists in agronomy, and the workforce required for this endeavor.
The initiative also includes the cultivation of papaya, lemon, orange, grapefruit, and tangerines to make juices, nectars, and tomato puree. The tomato campaign will begin in the coming days, and the sector is expected to process about 10 thousand tons of tomatoes in the Ceballos industrial plant, with the support of mini-industries in the same sector.
The program includes the planting of more than three thousand hectares per year until the end of 2020.
One of the goals is to promote pineapple crops until the region has two thousand hectares of the MD-2 variety and increase shipments to Europe, where they have a wide demand, said engineer Reinaldo Avila, head of the production unit.
Last year the province collected about seven thousand tons of pineapple. In 1991 they harvested 30,200 tons of the Spanish red variety, the highest figure in their history.
Source: radiosurco.icrt.cu