Cuba begins a crusade to increase the productivity of its coffee park with the renewal of 28,000 hectares, of which 67% will be used for growing Robusta, a grain that finds less appetite in specialized markets and is bought at a lower price than soft and sweet. However, the Cuban aromatic cannot compete even with its peers in the Caribbean with a production that has been reduced by more than half in the last 30 years.
Felipe Martínez Suárez, director of the Agroforestry Experimental Station, located in the mountainous municipality of Tercer Frente, in Santiago de Cuba, explained to the official newspaper Granma that a team of researchers is working on the recovery of 19,000 hectares of Robusta and another 9,000 of Arabica. The official explained that it is not a question of new crops, but of “rectifying the coffee” with pruning of young branches, changing crowns and replanting only when necessary.
The projection is optimistic, he added, and expects to obtain 25,600 tons of coffee with these measures, 1.05 tons for each hectare cultivated in the province, which is the one with the highest production nationwide. “We have four years to do all this, otherwise we will not have in 2030 the productive amount that the country claims,” he declared.
The coffee activity is carried out mainly in nine provinces: Santiago de Cuba, Guantánamo and Granma represent 90% of the national production; from the central region, Sancti Spíritus, Cienfuegos and Villa Clara contribute 7%; and in the west, Artemisa and Pinar de Río provide the remaining 3%.
Martínez Suárez explained that the coffee development program does not seek to increase the growing areas, but to increase yields and improve the infrastructure that currently allows for the contribution of four tons per hectare of Robusta coffee and 2.79 tons of Arabica. “Innovations” are also required, such as the use of biotechnology, preventing the planting of new coffee trees by seed and grafting in the field.
“We have four years to do all this, otherwise we will not have in 2030 the productive amount that the country claims”
Cuba record Its best harvest was in 1961, when it reached 60,330 tons of gold coffee, but since then production has been declining, to the point that in the 1970s and 1980s it had been reduced by almost two thirds and stood at 21,863. tons. The decline of the sector has continued in the 1990s and the 21st century, and by 2021 it barely reached 8,900 tons.
With this production, the Island remains below its peers in the Caribbean. According to the International Coffee Organization (OIC), Cuba obtained 130,000 bags of coffee (of 60 kilograms) in the 2019/2020 harvest, while producers in the Dominican Republic reported 402,000 bags and Haiti, a country with major problems of food insecurity. , produced 347,000 bags.
The production of the Cuban aromatic of the 2019/20 cycle was the highest since the 2008/2009 harvest, when 133,000 bags were produced. The result, however, is 3.1 times less compared to the 414,000 bags obtained in the 1990/1991 cycle, the last year available in the OIC database.
In other words, Cuban coffee production has fallen by 68.5% in the last three decades.
Martínez Suárez acknowledged that the harvest is insufficient to meet domestic demand and a “million dollar amount” is allocated for imports, for which reason, he promised, “significant volumes” of the new production will be allocated for social consumption and distribution in freely convertible currency (MLC) stores.
According to their projections, 14,000 tons of the grain will be for the regulated consumption of Cuban families, 5,000 for export and 2,000 tons for the cafeterias of the gastronomic network.
These results are conditional on the sector being able to obtain agricultural inputs to nourish plants such as biostimulant and fertilizers, added the official. “Although they do not reach the full volume required, they will be more effective with cultural attention,” he said.
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