1. Introduction
Value chains, as an organizational structure, reflects the continuous evolution of the market economy and represents a change in the behavior of management and organizational strategies, and the relationship of actors participating and interacting throughout this process, either on the basis of formal or informal relations. Physical goods flow from the beginning of the production process until they reach consumers and the financial flows, move from the final consumer to the grower .
The development of agri-food value chains is widely recognized as an appropriate approach to promote development in rural areas, increasing the commercialization of agricultural products and improving rural livelihoods.
Global agri-food systems are going through a rapid transformation towards higher value products, stricter food safety standards and more accentuated international and vertical integration.
The Cuban agricultural sector needs transformations adapted to its national context, to revert the weaknesses identified in the study carried out by the Cuban Ministry of Agriculture in 2012, to improve state and business management of the sector, where the main needs are the nonexistence of a systemic approach to implement new policies and management with enough efficacy.
Cuba, in the process of updating its economic and social model, proposes a set of transformations to contribute with efficiency and sustainability to the national economy. Among such needs, food security has been declared a national priority since 2008.
Traditional tools are insufficient, so it would be important to implement new policies, strategies and management that allow stakeholders to function as a system, with higher levels of integration, organization and adaptability from the perspective of the local development and municipal food self-supply, while contributing to local development as a process oriented from the municipality through transforming actions, articulating and mobilizing local potentials.
In the agricultural sector, the transformation towards a sustainable agriculture has a big social content, and is described as the strengthening of agricultural systems and sustainable local, demand, teaching, research, ways of learning and right policies .
The need to achieve municipal food self-supply, presupposes a new model of agri-business with greater autonomy of growers and gradual decentralization towards local governments, continue developing the program of municipal food self-supply, relying on Urban, Suburban and Family Agriculture, and the promotion of small food processors at the local level.
In October 2016, the Ministry of Agriculture drew up issues and instructions to organize and implement municipal self-supply of agricultural products, setting 15Kg of food per capita per month, both for the municipality and provincial scale.
The present paper is an exercise of participatory innovation developed and supported by the application of scientific results, and technologies in the process of implementing a value chain management model, in agricultural entities devoted to fruit trees growing, with the following objectives:
a) Apply and validate the management model with a value chain approach in the selected agricultural entities devoted to fruit growing.
b) Certify agro-ecological products using a Participatory Guarantee System (GSP).
2. Methodologies
2.1. Diagnosis of Agriculture in Fruit Trees Cooperatives
The beginning of the studies, implied the creation of an experts group made up of international and national institutions, organizations and actors that were mobilized and integrated. Their abilities, advocacy and decision-making skills were key to the development of the work.
Their respective competition coefficients (K) according to refers by ; were always higher than 0.90. The Group of Experts had the mission of analyzing documents on the relevance of applying value chains, which could be influential for municipal self-supply and local agri-food development.
After to analyze the diagnosis made, the external and internal context to identify opportunities and threats, as well as the internal conditions existing in the agricultural sector regarding these productions, the strengths and weaknesses in the selected entities were identified, for which a matrix was developed using the SWOT Analysis technique .
"to be continued in the next part"