HAVANA (Reuters) - Cuban President Raul Castro has finished shifting control over agriculture into local hands and has cut bureaucracy dramatically in an effort to stimulate food production, the Communist party newspaper Granma said on Thursday.

Granma said decision-making had moved from the national government to the municipal level and a large number of departments had been eliminated.

The Granma story was the first official word of the downsizing, though other aspects of the reform have been mentioned by the media and reported earlier by Reuters.

For decades land use and food distribution has been directed by the Agriculture Ministry in Havana.

With food imports rising to almost $2 billion in 2007 and Cubans complaining about soaring prices, Castro has put agriculture at the top of his agenda since taking over from his ailing older brother Fidel in February.

"Food production should be a primary task for Party leaders, who must be conscious of the fact that, in the present and as far as the future may be discerned, is a matter of maximum national security," Raul Castro told Communist party leaders earlier this week.

Cuban yields for most produce and livestock are below average for the Caribbean and Central America, experts say, and the government admits about 50 percent of arable land is under-utilized or simply fallow.

Cuban farmers complain the cumbersome state-run system has not worked, leaving crops to rot and farmers without timely supplies.

"The municipal agriculture delegations -- an organizational process that has just concluded -- will assume the responsibility for the functioning, development and control ... of agricultural production," Granma said.

"The need is more urgent due to the approval of the reorganization of the agricultural system, that involves the elimination of 104 companies (departments) and the shifting of the role of the majority that remain to service providers," the newspaper said.

Farmers have previously told Reuters that decision-making, from land use to resource allocation, recently had moved to the local level, that stores are opening where they can buy some supplies for the first time in decades and increasingly they can sell their produce directly to local consumers and state institutions like schools and hospitals.

Also, more land is being granted to private farmers and 1,100 cooperatives that produce more than half the country's produce on 20 percent of the tilled land, with the remainder owned by the state.

(Editing by Jeff Franks and Eric Walsh)

LIKE IT?  LET OTHERS KNOW

Thanks for participating!

Be the first to recommend - Sign in now


See what other people are recommending - Popular Stories