Agrarian Revolution: 54 years of progress

In Castrolandia, the more things change, the more they stay the same.  Purging is a very old habit in the 54-year-old bulemic dystopia.  After all, when the economy is tightly controlled from above by the Castro Dynasty and its feudal lords, inefficiency and corruption will necessarily follow, foodstuffs will become scarce and expensive, and someone other than the government will have to be blamed for the poor results.  Eventually, a routine purging of convenient scapegoats becomes an essential component of governing.  Schlemiels are routinely invested with meaningless "leadership" titles without real autonomy or authority and are then routinely purged, as needed, in an endless cycle.

This time around, the only difference is that the Royal family and its vassals can add one new element to its purging formula: the convenient excuse of "economic reforms."

But any way they splice and dice their failure, the oligarchs of Castrolandia are stuck with an undeniable testament to their dismal legacy: the fact that one of the most fertile lands in the world -- which once supplied the world with much of its sugar, and also exported tons of surplus produce -- must now import 60-80% of its food.

Cuban Government Purges 632 Co-op Leaders

HAVANA TIMES — In most countries farm cooperatives are owned by their members who elect a board of directors and/or administrators. In Cuba it’s very different; the state-run coops have little autonomy, an example of which was the decision this week to remove 632 presidents of farm co-ops in one fell swoop.

The unilateral decision was announced by Felix Gonzalez the head of ANAP, Cuba’s small farmers association that includes cooperatives.

“A cooperative cannot function well if leaders in charge don’t work well,” said Gonzalez.

He added that the heads of the cooperatives need training to be up for the challenges posed by the economic changes the Communist Party and the government are trying to implement on the island.

Cuba is currently importing somewhere between 60 and 80 percent of its foodstuffs, and must spend upwards of US $2 billion a year to pay the tab, noted Xinhua news.

President Raul Castro has made turning around the sluggish national production a priority of his government, however official production figures have continued to fall despite hundreds of thousands of hectares of land being given out in usufruct in recent years.

Rising international food prices make the fallback need to import most food a strategy that is unsustainable for the weak Cuban economy.