With a deep thunder, the huge threshing wheel of the rice harvester pushes through the green stalk tightly packed. Plants disappear in the stomach of the machine, where rice grains are separated from their husk and the straw is thrown back to the ground. Some workers see the process from the edge of the area.
After a few rounds, the blanket heads moves to the harvester sides and transferred the chopped rice to the bed of a waiting truck through a long pipe – then it again comes out.
This is the crop time on the fields of Los Palasios, a sleeping small town in the southeastern part of Cuban Pinar Dale Rio province.
Silos in the shining sun on the horizon and an aging rice mill flicker, and who looks like a picturesque postcard scene can prove to be important for Cuba’s food security.
The farm near Los Palasios belong to the Cubacon Farm, run by the state-r-rummed episode Egrindstristic de Granos Los Palasios. In 1959, all foreign landlords were abolished in view of Fidel Castro’s successful Communist Revolution.
But last year, the Cuba government took unprecedented steps by granting a foreign company the right to cultivate communist islands.
The first formign company to be given a lease on the field stretch was Vietnamese Agricultural VMA, a private hero agricultural company that is growing rice with Los Palasios.
Cuban rice output declines amid deep crisis
Still under the ownership of the Cuba state, the farm lease for the Vietnamese investors is associated with a long -term crisis in Cuba’s agricultural sector due to the overall decline in the country’s economy.
Fertilizers, pesticides, fuels, and spare parts are in low supply and most equipment are older or broken. In addition, a rigorous system of mandatory state quota offered encouragement for production.
What has come recently in playing, environmental factors, search as soil salty, drawt, and storm, which has reduced crops to reduce Cuban agriculture, even on the verge of collapse.
Ariel Garcia Perez, General Director of Egro -Industrial D Granos, believes that his company currently lacks the resources required for rice cultivation.
“I mean all necessary for fertilizer, herbicides, fungi, pesticides, and seeds – rice production,” he told the DW reporter at one of the company’s rice fields that BICT was deducted.
Perce said that due to a shortage of only 6.000 hectares (14.826 acres), the rice fields are currently pasted, out of about 23,000 hectares of about 23,000 hectares, the company is cultivated.
Rice is one of Cuba’s staple foods. Last year, the country produced about 80,000 tonnes of rice – more than 11% of its domestic demand. According to official data published by Cuba state newspaper, six years ago, production was more than three times. Granma recently. To meet domestic consumption, Cuba has to import.
How do you know customized seeds and better
As part of efforts to promote domestic rice production, the Cuba government has sought help from Vietnam as the two countries have maintained friendly relations for decades, intensifying specific agricultural cooperation in recent years.
For Perez, the Los Palasios project, however, marks a fully new level partnership.
Personally owned Agri VMA is managing independent lease from state intervention, with operations based on a business contract. The company has brought its own resources, technical experts and seeds to Cuba with varieties of hybrid rice developed in Vietnam.
The ongoing US sanctions and, recently, from the collapse of tourism during the Covid-19 epidemic, Cuba lacks the required foreign exchange reserves for such investment.
The Vietnamese company has directly hired 40 Cuba workers for undertaking-in a country where the employment is specific to mediated by the state-run agencies.
Perez says that his company is providing the rest of the farm workers. “We, as a Cuba Company, provide services to the Vietnamese company. They pay us to work on the ground, harvest rice, dry it and mix it.”
Vietnamese Agricultural Scientist TRG PAC, is one of the six Vietnamese experts involved in the project. “Cuba workers here are doing a good job. But there is a shortage of fertilizers, so we brought everything with us,” he told DW.
First crop promise
The Cuba-Vietnamese Participation Enterprise last began a decline with a test phase covering the 16 hectares planted with Vietnamese seeds.
Meanwhile, Agri VMA has been given so -called usufruct rights for more than 1,000 hectares of 1,000 hectares of rice. Usufruct rights, refer to the legal right to use and enjoy the benefits of a property, even if the legal ownership of that property is something else.
With the cultivation of more than 900 hectares under farming in 2025, the results so far are “encouraging,” Parez said, success for Vietnamese seeds and fertilizers is the primary quality.
The first 44 hectares of Los Palasios had 296 tonnes of paddy rice yield, which is 6.75 tonnes per hectare, and about four times a 1.7 tonnes per hectare was harvested elsewhere in Cuba in 2024.
Trong Pai said that the produce is not far from the eight tones obtained specificly on the large -scale fields in Vietnam. “We want to get even more yield here in Cuba, but this is our first plan. We still learn about soil and how many fertilizers we need to use.”
More than a pilot project?
The chopped rice belongs to agricultural VMA and the Cuba state buys it. Garcia Perez argues that the primary target was “changing imports”.
“We don’t need to bring rice from Vietnam to Cuba. Rice Styles here, and Cuba buy it from Vietnam. It’s cheap,” Heer said.
As GranmaCuba spent more than $ 300 million (€ 259.8 million) on rice imports last year, which was a big burden for a chronic-stapped state budget.
The import of rice is not only provocative and shipping costs. Due to the US Ambargo, shipping companies find it difficult to find shipping companies designed to provide grain on Cuba’s ports as they risk punishment under restrictions.
For Garcia Perez, the project is about agriculture purely, Vietnam has “resources and ability, we should take more of” to create a win -win “.
Los Palasios leases the farm for a three -year term to the Vietnamese company, and includes 1,000 hectares that are planned to extend to 5,000 hectares.
But Garcia Perez is already thinking very big, dreaming of partnership with Vietnam “extended to other Cuba provinces.”
This article was first published in German.
