Cuban farmers catch up with the burgeoning natural food craze, hoping to enjoy the international movement away from chemically-treated or genetically modified merchandise.
The Frank Pais agricultural cooperative, which gathers greater than four hundred producers and 115 farms in Guira de Melena in Artemisa Province, about 50 km south of Cuba’s capital Havana, has efficiently embraced organic agricultural techniques.
Although the cooperative’s 1,000-hectare land isn’t of the fine first-rate, growers have achieved excessive-degree manufacturing nationwide, producing a few 15,000 tons 12 months of root greens, green greens, grains, and fruit, in addition to dairy and meats.
“The land is right if the man is ideal,” stated the president of the cooperative, Pablo Orlando Perez, an agronomist acknowledged to the locals as Landy.
Frank Pais annually produces about 42,000 liters of milk, 12 lots of red meat, and one hundred twenty tons of beef, broadly speaking bought to Cuba’s Ministry of Agriculture.
Starting in 2013, the cooperative also started to cooperate with the Ministry of Tourism, supplying clean produce to inns in Varadero and Cayo Largo, famend accommodations inside the Caribbean.
“For six years, we’ve got offered extra than five million pesos (five million U.S. Greenbacks) a year to the tourism sector, and that has helped us prepare for exporting,” said Landy.
Julian Leal, one of the top producers at the cooperative, who inherited some 20-hectare land from his father, is making ready to plant peppers and have the goods licensed as organic food for export.
“We are preparing the soil to gain certification to assure that the harvest is obtained naturally and ecologically,” said Leal.
Given his success in industrial agriculture, Leal was given guidance from the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and its initiative Environmental Foundations for Local Food Sustainability, which provided him with the gadget, which includes water systems and a biodigester treat organic waste.
The cooperative also hopes to increase exports of marmalade produced via a nearby plant with 15 workers. Each day processes 12—five heaps of mango, guava, tomato, and other plants offered from the cooperative.
The plant includes a small processing facility installed four years ago through the UNDP initiative.
The export-first-rate marmalade is presently sold to some 50 nation-run corporations and can be shipped abroad soon to help generate a good deal-needed overseas sales for Cuba’s cash-strapped government.
I’ve always loved food and I’ve always loved sharing my love of food with the world. This love led me to become a professional foodie, opening my very own restaurant called The Great American Cafe and writing a blog called Foodieso.com, where I’ve been able to share my recipes, ideas and thoughts about food.
