Comment By Bob L.
Nov. 8th 2013
I could not believe what I was reading when I saw this article, I thought it was a story about the direction that the United States is taking.
If you look around, you can see farm land being taken over by Taxes and large Land Investors to build more homes, so that the YUPPY Class can move out of the cities into $7 and 8 or 9 hundred Thousand dollar homes, and any one who get in to their way, they close them down, more farm land has been Closed because these people don’t like the smell that comes from these farms that are still in operation, they eventually get them closed down, what is next, total Import of our food that does not always come in safe to eat, and who’s fault is that, CDC and the FDA, better known as the Federal Government and their meddling and not doing their JOB, they are more worried about ruffling some ones feathers then Food Safety.
Like it says, the country is importing around 60 percent of its food, what is the United States doing when it comes to Importing it’s food, we know that when it comes to contaminated foods, the United States throws all the blame on U.S. Farms until some one gets the true story.
First Sentence: Cuba rolled out a master plan this week to reform food production and sales that definitively ends the state’s monopoly on distribution and replaces many rules that hamper farmers and consumers, does that not sound like what the U.S. is starting to monopolize on here in America telling Businesses, Farmers, and the people what they are going to Grow, prepare, eat, and what Country it will come from.
Look at what it did to the Tomato farmers here in the U.S. a few years back when it was really from Mexico, but look what it did to the coast of buying Tomatoes, and we are still paying for it to-day, how many farm are closed today because of it, and now the Government want to control what you are going to eat, so how many people are going to lose their job because of the Federal Government and the President and his wife meddling into the American people’s lives.
A good example of meddling in people’s lives, is the Affordable Care Act, look how many people are losing their Insurance, and are now uninsured, and a lot of them will not be able to afford, and how many are losing or having their hours of work cut.
There are a lot of things that could have been done with out forcing people into an insurance with out a good plan, for one they could have said I won’t go into full details, but all they had to do was, Existing Conditions for one, but do what the Republicans said, allow Insurance Companies cross state lines, and regulate them which they were not, and not let the states say who can operate there, like Washington State, some Insurance Companies can only operate in certain Counties, not the whole state, but there is a lot that can be done with out Forcing people into some Government Controlled Program.
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Cuba rolls out master plan for food production and distribution
By Marc Frank
11-08-2013
HAVANA (Reuters) – Cuba rolled out a master plan this week to reform food production and sales that definitively ends the state’s monopoly on distribution and replaces many rules that hamper farmers and consumers.
A decree, which puts the management of most food distribution in non-state hands, will be applied on an experimental basis in Havana and the adjoining provinces of Artemisa and Mayabeque before going nationwide beginning in 2015.
With the country importing around 60 percent of its food and private farmers outperforming state farms on a fraction of the land, authorities are gradually deregulating the sector and leasing fallow land to would-be farmers.
It is slow going, with farm output up just a few percentage points since President Raul Castro, who replaced his ailing brother Fidel in 2008, began agricultural reforms as part of a broader effort to “modernize” the Soviet-style economy.
Many aspects of the new law bring together reforms already in place or activities that have spontaneously developed and been tolerated by authorities even if technically illegal, including the renting and selling of trucks to farmers and allowing them to contract private hauling of crops instead of relying on the state.
The decree allows farmers, cooperatives and state farms to sell produce in any quantity and to anyone they please after meeting state contracts, instead of being mired in regulations as to how much they can sell, to whom and how.
Large consumers, including state entities and private eateries, can purchase produce wholesale from private farms and cooperatives, instead of just the state.
According to the law, published in the official Gazeta on Wednesday, state-run wholesale markets will be leased to cooperatives and most state retail markets will be leased to farm and non-farm cooperatives and licenses issued to individuals to sell produce.
BOON TO PRIVATE SECTOR
The new system still sets prices for a few basics such as rice and beans, prioritizes state contracts (54 percent of output last year) and prohibits the sale of a few export crops such as tobacco and coffee, but by and large represents a big step toward allowing market forces to govern production and prices.
“This very important initiative fulfills the government’s commitment to facilitating wholesale markets for fruits and vegetables as the private sector has petitioned,” said Richard Feinberg, whose new study, “Soft Landing in Cuba? Emerging Entrepreneurs and Middle Classes,” was released this week by the Washington, D.C.-based Brookings Institution.
“Remarkably, it provides space for private businesses to both produce and market foodstuffs in wholesale quantities, in open and healthy competition with the state,” he said.
Cuban farmers and consumers have long complained that the state’s monopoly on food sales is a disincentive to production, inefficient and leads to waste and poor quality produce.
“Many times we do not produce all that we can for fear we will have nowhere to sell it,” said farmer Diogenes Telles, in a phone interview from central Camaguey province.
“Now nothing will rot in the fields because the state doesn’t pick it up. If we have the security that all we produce we can sell, of course we are going to produce more,” he said.
Cuban economists and farmers have argued for years that the state should get out of assigning farm supplies and equipment to farmers in exchange for contracted food and let those who till the land purchase what they need based on their success and thus purchasing power, something not addressed in the law.
Roberto Perez Perez, the member of the Communist Party reform commission in charge of agriculture, told the state-run media this week that a pilot project to sell supplies to farmers was already underway in the special municipality of the Isla de la Juventud.
“With the measures that are being taken and those that will be implemented we will have an agricultural sector closer to what we need,” the official media quoted him has stating.
(Editing by David Adams and Jackie Frank)
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