Cuba seemed to be pretty on top of its agriculture system.  I’m not sure how it works economically at all and I doubt that farmers make much money.  In almost every city I noticed small gardens on personal property, as well as cooperatively run gardens.  Along the main highways there were larger fields of different crops depending on the location.  It seemed like any land that had the potential to grow food, was doing just that.

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CUBA IS SWEET

On our first journey through the east of the island we passed massive fields of sugar cane.  Sugar is probably the biggest agricultural industry in Cuba.  It’s used to make sugar ofcourse, rum, candies and juices.

We were in Cuba during March and that was sugar cane harvesting season.  We saw big rusty machines being used to quickly cut the cane and pile it into the backs of trucks or on train compartments.  People also harvested sugar can using machetes.

The cane was usually pressed in one factory and then made into rum at another factory.  The train tracks came right past the factory to unload the stalks.  The factories were state-run and if sugar cane is anything like tobacco, the farmers that grow it probably have to give a certain percentage to the factories.

We passed many fields that had recently been burned.  I’m not sure why this field was burned or what was growing or what they will plant next.  I learned in Jamaica that sometimes farmers will burn cane fields before they harvest them so that they burn away the leaf blades and only the sugary stalks are left.  This makes the cane easier to harvest since the leaf blades are not there to scratch the harvesters and make them itch.

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URBAN AGRICULTURE

As we drove through various cities, banana plants sprung up around almost every house and school yard.  Bananas and plantains grew everywhere.  In front of most houses people grew gardens, usually bananas, squash, papaya, pumpkin, coconuts or guava.  Many people seemed to be trying to grow as much food as they could in what little space that they had.

COops

I noticed many coops as we drove through the various cities of Cuba.  They were usually fenced in and they all looked the same, with neat long raised beds.

This coop was just outside of downtown Havana near Plaza de la Revolucion.  Havana is huge and so I would assume there would be many of these coops.  In this picture there are 2 different coops right next to each other.

The man working there, told me that the coops had been started by the government so that they could provide more food for the communities.  Each of the coops had their own little food stand where they sold what they grew.  The man told me that the coop he worked in employed 4people and he worked 7days a week.  He wasn’t working at the time I was there (the middle of the day) but relaxing under the shade of a tree.

Most of the coops had long raised beds like the ones above.  At this coop, they had trucked in a lot of dirt to fill these.  They seemed to keep all the beds planted and they were nicely weeded.  They were all set up with either drip irrigation or little sprinklers.

At the end of each bed they had planted marigolds, basil, oregano and other aromatic herbs.  The man said that they did that to keep insects away from their crops.

A lot of the beds were planted with more than just one crop.  This bed had lettuce and beets on the sides.  Other combinations I noticed were lettuce with onions and lettuce with carrots.  Everything was nicely labeled.

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VIñALES

Viñales had beautiful dark red-orange earth.  The hills throughout were round and full of caves.  One of the river caves we went into was made up of a smooth red mud similar to the color of the outside earth.  The rainy season was just beginning when we arrived in March.  Farmers were cutting their tobacco and planting yucca and sugar cane.  Outside of the town Viñales to the north-westish there were tons of fields.  Many of the campesinos seemed to work their fields and then live somewhere closer to town. 

This man was plowing his field and other men were following him around with sticks of yucca, dropping them and then kicking dirt over top to cover them.  Some bigger farms had tractors (like the big sugar cane fields) but these campesinos usually used oxen on ploughs.  They also used oxen to pull carts of various materials or crops around their farms and donkeys or horses to pull things through town.

Goats roamed free on this recently harvested tobacco field. The area around Pinar del Rio and Viñales, in the western half of Cuba is known for its tobacco plantations.  Fields of tobacco covered the countryside.

Men cut the tobacco leaves, usually leaving the bottom leaves on the stem.  They use a special curved blade and wear leather gloves to keep from slicing their hands.  They hang the tobacco on their arms until they are full up and then they hang them on wooden poles balanced on saw horses, like the ones in the background.

After the tobacco dries in the sun for a few days it is taken to tobacco houses to dry and cure for 4months or so.  The houses are made with palm thatching on all sides.  The tobacco houses are dark, with one door on each the west and east side. Inside there are layers of poles for the tobacco leaves to hang from.

Here is a photo of the tobacco in bloom, this farmer has not cut his yet.

The difference between the factory tobacco and the artisanal tobacco is the way it is processed.  Since tobacco is very strong and full of a lot more nicotine than people want to smoke, the leaves are processed before they are rolled into cigars or cigarettes.  The factories use chemicals to lessen this.  The farmers and wives of the farmers process the tobacco using fermentation because they could not afford or access the strong chemicals that the factories use.  They make a mixture of guava leaves, lime leaves, honey and rum and they ferment the tobacco in this.  They then let the tobacco dry and roll it into handmade cigars.  To roll the cigars the women use different leaves for different purposes.  They use one type of leaf for the tobacco in the inside, another leaf for the first roll and a third leaf to hold it all together in the shape of a cigar.  I watched a woman roll a cigar in just 2minutes.  She called it un cigaro al momento!

The tobacco farmers are required to give 90% of their tobacco to the factories, so they are left with only 10% of their crop to make any money off of.  Not very fair is it?  I wonder if this is true for other crops aswell…

PAlm THatching

Just a photo of a house in progress.  I’m not sure where the thatch palm came from, maybe the nearby mountains or it could have been trucked in from somewhere else; it was not uncommon to see trucks piled high with thatch palm.  It’s amazing to see all the palm fronds lieing on the ground; it puts it in perspective as to how many palms are needed for one roof.

FOod FOrest IN THe MOuntains

I went to a man name Raul’s farm.  His farm was just outside of the town, I’m sure someone could help you find it if you wanted to visit (it is one of the few places I can recommend going to in Cuba).  He was a nice old man and was generous with his fruit.  He had a small produce stand where he sold, honey(wild harvested from the mountain trees and caves!), coffee beans, fresh juices, artisanal cigars, and a plentitude of fresh fruits.  I hung out at his place for an entire day.

He grew a lot pf pineapples, had a fresh litter of pigs at the time, fed sugar cane to his horses and had a big pond for irrigation and animals.  His farm sat right up against the side of a mountain and he said that it was all his so that I was welcome to explore the trails.  I felt lucky to arrive at his farm because I had been wanted to hike some trails in the mountains!  Just behind his farm was a set of stairs that led up to a cave called Cueva de las Vacas.  The cave was free to enter although it may not be for long because I learned from a guide that it was now illegal to go there because they were in the process of figuring out how they could charge tourists to enter.  Raul did not mind, he was not in support of charging people.  The cave cut through to the other side of the mountain and had a beautiful view of the town and farm fields below.  There were formations that hung from the side that were reminiscent of the floating mountains from the film Avatar.

When I returned from the cave, Raul pointed me in the direction of some other trails that he said led up to a valley in the mountains where he used to farm.  So I took off and look what I found!

The pictures don’t do it justice.  We stumbled upon an established food forest that was nestled between 3 big cliffs.  In the first forest there were bananas, then coffee underneath and then taro/coco/malanga/Colocasia esculenta underneath the coffee.  I was amazed when I came across this.  It looked so overgrown and like it had been there a long time too.  The ground was covered with leaves and sticks and the bananas shaded the other 2 plants below.

We came across another food forest down another trail.  These forests were not near to the farm, they were well up the trail in the heart of the mountains, about a 30minute hike that included a slight climb up some steep rocks.  But they were perfect areas to grow food; they were flat, shaded and probably caught the water from the surrounding mountains.

The second forest was also surrounded by cliffs on all sides with only one entrance that we could see.  This one looked a little more maintained and was more sunny than the first one.  In addition to the bananas, coffee and taro, this one had some papaya, guava trees and coconut trees.  They were all randomly interspersed with each other and the ground was littered with leaves and fallen branches.  Mountains plants grew around as well and were not kept clean.

When we returned to Raul, I asked if they still harvested from there and he said yes of course they did.  It was great because the forests seemed so low maintenance now that they were established that all the men had to do was make the hike up and harvest the fruit to bring back.