Communist Cuba has begun decentralising the state-dominated agriculture sector in what appears to be the first major move by new President Raul Castro to improve efficiency and cut bureaucracy.
At meetings across Cuba, farmers are being told decisions ranging from land use to resource allocation and sales will no longer be taken at the 17-floor agriculture ministry in Havana but at the local level, farmers who attended said.
In addition, local municipal offices will be streamlined and will take more into account the activities of private farmers and co-operatives, not just state farms, they said.
Cuba watchers say this will provide more leeway for private initiative to raise food output, Raul Castro's top economic priority since he began running the country on a temporary basis in mid-2006. Cuba's revolutionary leader, Fidel Castro, 81, has not appeared in public since undergoing abdominal surgery in July 2006. He has never fully recovered and his brother Raul Castro, 76, formally took over as president last month.
Few Cuba experts expect to see dramatic reforms under Raul Castro, but the new president has begun making subtle changes to the economy that may allow the state-run system to better meet the needs of the Cuban people.
Cuba has around 250,000 family farms and 1,100 private co-operatives, which represent an island of individual ownership in an economy 90 percent controlled by the state. But together they till less than one third of the land.
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