The good formula of a thinking that adapts and knows how to find answers

Díaz-Canel and Morales Ojeda were in the municipality of Yaguajay, where the first stop was in the UEB Merida Dairy.

“This is a good example,” said the President, after speaking with Ignacio González Más, director of the company, which in its beginnings produced only cheese and today boasts a range of a dozen products, although Mérida Cheese continues to be its signature product.

In a clean and orderly environment, where 173 Cubans not only work on valuable productions, but also radiate the efficiency of the UEB to the community, Ignacio said that the center has made it possible for the surrounding population to have guaranteed drinking water; and that the children of the school, the teachers and the family doctor eat lunch at the UEB.

“Imagine how much more they could do here with the profits they have,” the President thought, when he learned that the production unit could not count on that money because the company to which it belongs, the Provincial Dairy, absorbs the profits.

“The inefficiency of the company swallows the efficiency of the UEB. These are some of the things that we have to change in the entrepreneurial thinking”, ratified the Head of State.

Faced with a company that relies on self-consumption, with spaces for animal breeding, with the desire to own more land to increase production, the President returned to an idea that he usually shares in these times: Why, with the same blockade, why, with the same adversities, do some advance and others do not? The answer, as he has said on several occasions, is to be found in the management methods and the way in which the workers have been involved.

The same line of thought marked the arrival and the exchange in the UEB Santos Caraballé -belonging to the Venegas Livestock Company-, where the country’s administration was able to verify several achievements in the Vaquería Típica Dos, one of the 18 that this company has, of which ten have been recovered.

Before listening to the detailed explanation of César Liván Franco, director of the Livestock Company, the order and beauty of the place had already made the President say: “Here we have seen how we want to see cattle breeding”. And his expression was based on the care in the signs, in the well-constructed fences, in a contemporary culture that the world of cattle breeding carries and demands.

In addition to the above, at the company level there are areas for self-consumption, areas where rice, vegetables and protein crops to feed the animals are grown. In this universe, the income is high, there are no bank arrears, there is communication with the university, there are warehouses for agricultural inputs, a veterinary clinic, beautiful houses are built for the cowboys… And all of this led Díaz-Canel to ask: “What is it wrong here?”

According to César Liván, last year there were more than 30 cases of theft and slaughter of cattle; in 2024 there will be only three. The steps in the right direction motivated the President to express: “Yes, we can get out of this mess. What is happening is that it has to be this way: working.”
When the President said to the executive that if they had remained indifferent, waiting for an import ship to come, they would not have achieved the success they have today, César Liván was categorical, in a clear allusion to the urgency of staying awake and not waiting for external forces: “It is forbidden to talk about it here.”

The Mario Muñoz Polyclinic was the third point on the agenda of the visit, a place that serves nearly 10,000 people in the Venegas neighborhood. There are 16 family doctor’s houses that are part of the health center and this important institution boasts, among other achievements, zero maternal mortality and zero infant mortality.

A few minutes before the start of the meeting that usually concludes the visit to each municipality, the Head of State informed the inhabitants of the Venegas neighborhood of his conviction that the largest of the Antilles can move forward with intelligence and hard work, and that after seeing the remarkable experiences of municipalities such as Yaguajay, it is unquestionable that those who succeed do so because they have done things in a different way, different from those who have not yet broken the inertia.