The December paddocks have already recorded the problem, even though the exact havoc of the drought cannot be measured in liters (L), because every time the Dairy and Livestock managers speak, they agree on the same point: no delivery to the industry all the milk that comes out of the udders.

This is more or less how it is summarized the current state of a collection that Osvaldo Morales Batista, director of Dairy Factory in Ciego de Ávila, illustrated in figures last week. “From the North area, which is where they have always brought the largest volumes, the cars come practically empty. They arrive with 11,000 L, and before, around this same time, they arrived with 18,000”.

Today, between North and South, that is the daily average contribution. Such a decrease once again puts an industry in tension that since May had been waking up with uncertainty on wheels. Then, its commercial director, Yulema Yero Pérez de Corcho, explained that only with the 34,000 L per day it was not possible to fulfill all the orders, and our luck would be the misfortune of the people of Sancti Spiritus who, unable to process all their milk due to problems in your industry, they sent us about 10,000 or 20,000 L, while the damage lasted.

Thus, the medical diets that in this province require 15,000 L each day to be able to comply with the 10 laps established per month could be resumed. However, at the current rate of 18,000 L per day, what would be left for delivery to children under seven? Let's ignore other productions and destinations.

Priorities begin to compete, unless powdered milk (imported) covers the deficit again and "the country is now giving us a little, but it is not sustainable," said the Dairy manager.

According to Leonardo Pérez Rodríguez, subdelegate for Livestock in the Provincial Delegation of Agriculture, the decrease is normal in drought, so that and other reasons, he clarifies, affect the fact that some 3 million liters are owed to this year's plan. “We are going to deliver more than one and a half million, compared to 2021; however, we must not comply with what was agreed in 2022, which was higher”, he predicts.

The debt of the Dairy Factory with the producers, because, for example, "for more than three months it was owed to the farmers of Majagua and, somehow, that had an impact on lowering the delivery has been a setback", Misleidy Abad Modey, pointed out in an exchange. The first secretary of the Party in that municipality bet on sincere exchanges in the places so that the hiring is also a mirror of reality.

That is where another of the debts that puts current and future plans in check is pointing. According to Leonardo, only 33 percent of the milk in 2023 could be contracted. "There are still some 8 million liters to search for." In addition, January is at the turn of the year.

The matter has become so inconceivably complex that, during the hiring tours, almost everything has happened. From ranchers who have gotten up and left, others who have not attended the call in their productive base, to those who have proposed in advance, quite naturally, to pay the industry 10.00 pesos for each liter not delivered —as and how non-compliance with the marketing policy is indemnified— in order to dispose of the production. The director of the Dairy Factory himself told it astonished.

Simple account: they give the Dairy 10.00 pesos and keep the liter that can be sold on the street for 100.00. Round stimulus for “defaulters”.

Although Nexy Véliz Naranjo, a member of the Provincial Bureau of the Party, insisted on the obligation to comply with plans, "since the State handed over that land to count on production later," the outlook is very tense because, even rescinding the tenure of the land, it is not guaranteed that, wherever these cows go, each one contributes its 2.5 L of milk per day.

Politics and economy look at each other's faces in the face of future plans. But the milk still seems “diluted”.