Lalrp.org: 
Six months after Hurricane Ian devastated 80% of the area’s tobacco infrastructure, farmers are attempting to recuperate from the catastrophe. And although they’ll produce lower than in previous seasons, they are saying they’ll nonetheless be capable of harvest the leaves for premium hand-rolled cigars, one of many Caribbean nation’s key exports.
“Not a single tobacco home was left standing. There have been no warehouses, there was no tree left,” Robaino advised The Related Press, remembering how the storm left the area on the finish of September. “All the pieces broke and at that second I didn’t imagine it was potential to plant.”
Robaina, 46, is inheritor to a grandfather’s property that’s so well-known {that a} cigar model bears his title: Vegas Robaina. Firstly of October, Robaiana was resigned to planting solely beans and greens — one thing, no less than, however a waste for land that may produce among the best export tobacco.
However then he modified his thoughts and determined to strive planting tobacco “to keep up the household custom of a century,” he mentioned, exhibiting his tobacco over two hectares (about 5 acres) — or about 30% of what he had at the moment in 2022.
Ian’s affect added to an already intense financial disaster in Cuba, the place the Gross Home Product (GDP) dropped 11% in 2020.
Many farmers don’t keep in mind ever having lived by means of the form of destruction introduced by the hurricane. Within the fall, that they had doubted they’d even be capable of plant any tobacco this season. It requires particular care, utility of fertilizers at exact moments, irrigation, material to cowl the vegetation and drying homes for the leaves.
With winds of greater than 200 kilometers per hour (125 miles per hour), Ian crossed the island from south to north to the west, devastating the Pinar del Río area the place 80% of the island’s tobacco is produced together with nearly all of its tobacco for export.
5 folks in Cuba died general and 30,000 had been evacuated. Hundreds of utility poles fell. Total communities had been with out electrical energy, water, and telephones for weeks. Rice, corn, candy potato and fruit crops had been destroyed.
Some 10,000 tobacco drying homes had been toppled. About 33,000 tons of saved leaves had been misplaced, based on authorities.
Non-public tobacco producers have been assembly with authorities since final fall to safe commitments for the state to assist settle money owed and pay for supplies to rebuild tobacco drying homes. Assist additionally has come from fellow tobacco producing nations Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic, and producers additionally chipped in to assist one another.
Reiniel Rojas, a 33-year-old farmer who has been cultivating premium tobacco for ten years, planted 13 hectares (about 30 acres) round La Coloma because of the truth that he was capable of end his drying homes.
“The restoration was fast,” Rojas mentioned.
Rojas acquired seeds from a colleague to plant. Robaina acquired 4 chainsaws from producer associates from different nations and his cousin lent him the drying home, whereas he loaned some fertile land to 2 different farmers.
Nature additionally helped by withholding plagues of caterpillars or fungi, so demand for pesticides was low.
A tobacco home prices a producer round $20,000 on the official alternate charge. An excellent harvest, with the fragile work of a complete 12 months, will pay a farming household as much as $50,000 {dollars}, farmers advised the AP.
The determine isn’t small for Cuba, the place a state wage within the metropolis quantities to about $200 a month on the official charge within the restricted official financial system, however could be solely about $29 in sensible phrases for many Cubans within the broader, casual financial system.
Enrique Blanco, agricultural director of Tabacuba, a part of the state-owned Cubatabaco firm that regulates and manages tobacco, advised the AP that this 12 months’s plan for tobacco planting already is all the way down to about 9,500 hectares (23,000 acres) — down from an initially deliberate 15,000 (37,000).
There will probably be some 2,100 hectares (5,200 acres) of premium leaves grown below the duvet of cloth, with which the nation hopes to cowl the approaching export demand, Blanco mentioned.
—— Andrea Rodríguez is on Twitter: www.twitter.com/ARodriguezAP
