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In statements to the press, Mario Morales García, department head of the provincial teaching direction, said that these students must be linked to the production sector until the end of the academic year, which will allow them to participate in the recently initiated sugar harvest and in the subsequent tasks related to the repair work.

Residents in the municipalities of Puerto Padre; Jesus Menendez, Majibacoa, Colombia and Amancio Rodriguez, the 134 students are in their third year in different specialties like sugar technology and manufacture, sugar machinery, and agricultural and livestock mechanization.

As in the previous years, during this period they will be assessed by the same professors from the polytechnic institutes and by specialists from the basic business units, workshops and other entities where they are working. The harvest team belonging to the Olo Pantoja polytechnic school, from the municipality of Jesus Menendez, was included among the most outstanding groups in the last harvest season, yielding more than 60,000 pesos of profit to the national economy, according to Mario Morales.

This period of familiarization and practice is very useful for the comprehensive training of the students, due to the sensitive link established between the workers, technicians, directors, areas and centres where many of the students will work once they finish school.

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The value of making the land produce in the context of the country in the present state of affairs, when there is an intention of reducing the imports, the need of training not only workers or technicians, but also engineers and specialists emerges.

The poor inclination towards agricultural engineering once the students graduate from high school is an eyebrow-raising issue, especially in zones like this one, with a long agricultural and sugar harvesting tradition.

With 61 students enrolled in the regular course and 96 in irregular courses, Narledio Castillo Pacheco PhD., dean of the Agronomy Faculty of the Vladimir Ilich Lenin University, said that he is not comfortable with the situation, even though it is likely to improve.

The Teaching Vice Dean, Idania Ruesga González, said that "generally agronomy is related to great sacrifice, devotion, rigor, permanent contact with land, strong sunshine, rain...and they ignore the wide horizon of work and realization that they can achieve in a major like this, which is based on 21 sciences and about 45 subjects in 16 disciplines that ensure the real comprehensive training of the graduates."

The prejudice of the population is accompanied by the influence of some parents who sometimes tell their children to "think twice what they are going to decide" and advise them to take an easier specialty, without considering that producing food is one of the most noble professions on earth.

That's why the strategy of the faculty implements some actions to guide the students, provide them with greater interaction with the polytechnic institutes and foster the idea of guiding the younger generations and motivate them towards these majors, which should be done from the elementary and secondary levels.

Osmany Escalona, provincial sub-delegate of Human Resources in Agriculture, said that "there is a lack of agricultural engineers. I wish we had one of them in all the production unities or in the fields of science, technique and research.

It is essential that society, the school and the family join to foster the interest for this type of engineering in the younger generations. The country needs their cooperation to produce from the land and improve the national agriculture yield.