CUBA: Yurisniel Cabrera, 35, is a fourth-generation tobacco farmer, eking out a meager residing from the leaves used to make Cuba’s fabled cigars. Shoppers can fork out greater than $10 for a unmarried cigar, however for his months of work, Cabrera earned just a few hundred US greenbacks from final yr’s harvest. This yr, the outlook is even bleaker. Sanctions-stricken and dealing with its worst financial disaster in just about 3 many years, Cuba is working low on fertilizers and insecticides. The harvest “isn’t of a just right sufficient high quality,” Cabrera sighed as he confirmed AFP round his crop amid the rounded hills dubbed mogotes that dot the fertile Vinales valley in western Cuba.
“It lacked fertilizer and pesticide,” he mentioned as he slipped a pile of leaves draped over his arm onto a “cuje,” the picket lathe used to dry the harvest in a country, picket “tobacco space.” Like different farmers in Pinar del Rio province, the place 65 p.c of Cuba’s tobacco is produced, Cabrera sells 95 p.c of his yield to the Tabacuba state company. What stays is for personal use.
State units the cost
In Cuba, the federal government supplies insecticides and fertilizers to state-run cooperatives, and units the cost at which farmers can download them. Tabacuba determines the cost paid for the farmers’ tobacco, according to the standard of the leaves. “I’ve to shop for the entire product from them (the government),” defined farmer Livan Aguiar, 49, from the agreement of San Juan and Martinez, close to Vinales. “They provide me the fertilizer, the fungicide… on the finish of the harvest they price me for the entirety,” he mentioned whilst slicing tobacco at the land he makes use of on a state usufruct. Like Cabrera, Aguiar is anxious concerning the have an effect on the loss of fertilizer can have on his yield and source of revenue this season.
Tabacuba govt Pavel Noe Caseres defined that uploading agricultural chemical substances have been “difficult” this season, because of logistical bottlenecks led to via the coronavirus pandemic, and ongoing US sanctions. The harvest has fallen from 32,000 heaps in 2017 to twenty-five,800 in 2020 and can most probably achieve handiest 22,000 heaps this season, he mentioned. The have an effect on would principally be on home customers, as the rustic has sufficient tobacco in retailer to provide export cigars for 2 years, added Caseres. Tobacco is Cuba’s primary agricultural export.
Cabrera and his circle of relatives sowed 25,000 vegetation for the season that began final October and results in Might. From it, he expects to get little over 550 kilograms (about 1,200 kilos) of tobacco leaf-almost part of final yr’s yield. In 2021, he made simply over 80,000 pesos-about $3,320 on the respectable change price however handiest about $800 at the black marketplace the place maximum Cuban transactions happen.
This yr it’ll be even much less. So Cabrera and his circle of relatives will glance to the corn and different meals they develop at the aspect for survival. Like his father, grandfather and great-grandfather prior to him, Cabrera lovingly treatments the tobacco leaves, as soon as dried, in a different concoction that incorporates guava leaf, honey and rum blended into water. This is a lengthy procedure, requiring mastery, for which he reaps little monetary praise.-AFP