They call to increase the use of cassava flour to make cookies and breads in Ciego de Ávila

Specialists in Ciego de Ávila called to increase the use of cassava flour in the preparation of breads and cookies, given the shortage of wheat flour in that Cuban town.

In a special newspaper reportInvader titled "The cassava boom, from the field to the industry?", journalist Katia Siberia states that the province "has been forced to replace corn flour with cassava flour in cookies and bread released until 20 percent in the mix.

Supported by the testimony of several experts cited, she explains that the idea is that the use of cassava is not an alternative, but a choice.

After analyzing the growth of this crop in the country and in the world, and talking about the multiple benefits of the shrub, considered last year by the FAO "the food of the century", he indicates that the national infrastructure for the processing and obtaining of cassava flour is still deficient.

Siberia recognizes that it is necessary to "perfect processes before increasing volumes in correspondence with what is planted in the soil," "because one thing is to cultivate and another, we know, to process," he says.

Remember that "it would not be the first time that the volumes of the field exceed us on the way to an industry" that, in the long run, ends up not working and being abandoned.

In the case of cassava, he clarifies, the process must be efficient because "the time it retains its properties is very short before acquiring that bluish or blackish color and becoming unusable."

He emphasizes that from "crab to bread or biscuit, there is a path that is described as very short, but neither on land nor in industry are there such easy shortcuts."

The Delegation of Agriculture in Ciego de Ávila reported that cassava occupies 42 percent of the hectares (ha) of various crops in the territory, and only in November 429 hectares of the 1,063 hectares that would be occupied by all the crops (banana, taro sweet potato, potato and cassava).

The director of the National Institute of Tropical Food Research (INIVIT), Sergio Rodríguez Morales, clarifies that in the last 20 years, cassava has become a crop that has grown by more than 100 million tons, only surpassed by corn. and Cuba has been inserted into that "boom."

There were about 110,000 hectares planted on the island, the largest area of all time, and the Ministry of Agriculture plans to double that area "in the shortest possible time."

In parallel, the Ministry of the Food Industry has had to deploy specialists from its Research Institute to make the most of the yield of cassava.

In addition to flour for breads and cookies, this crop is used for animal consumption, completely replacing corn with cassava flour in diets for broiler chickens; obtaining cassava flour for the development of sweet products intended for feeding celiacs and use of this flour "in the development of a meat product."

Jesús Rodríguez Mendoza, director of the IIIA, explained that making the flour requires a complex routine, since the cassava "cannot be cut however you want, the surface for drying must be uniform because a piece that is not dried well spoils the rest; it's like the rotten potato in the sack.

In the midst of the general crisis in Cuba, alternatives have been managed to overcome the lack of food. Last June, managers and workers of the Food Industry company of Ciego de ÁvilaThey turned to cassava and rice flour to "reverse negative balances", as part of "43 measures aimed at strengthening the state company."

Innovators from said state company built a plant in the province to produce cassava flour. According toInvader, every month the plant produces more than six tons of the product, an insufficient quantity, but which "allows some preparations to be protected."

In May they had announced the development ofcrackers, sweets and bread released with cassava flour, given the shortage of wheat flour. He clarified that this product was one of the ways that the entity found to be able to continue operating, after closing 2021 with 35 million losses.

Last October, the Cuban regime described the situation of wheat flour supply in the national market as critical due to lack of financing, which directly affects the production of standardized bread that reaches the population.

The technical director of the Cuban Milling Company, Yanet Lomba Estupiñán, commented in this regard that as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic and the Russian war in Ukraine, the price of a ton of that cereal rose to more than $650. in the international market, so now a ship of wheat costs between $14 and $16 million dollars, and the island does not have money for the purchase.

However, the report points out a fear fueled by dozens of projects that were announced with enthusiasm and turned out to be frustrated attempts in the Caribbean nation without much relevance or social impact.

From moringa recipes, thecasabe production in some provinces, and pumpkin pulp breads, all have constituted unviable alternatives and ultimately frustrated attempts to resolve a part of the basic Cuban diet.