Tag: Cafetal Buenavista

My Cuban Agroecology Tour Summarized

January 2020 OGS Cuba Trip Group

In January 2020 I was part of a group tour of Cuban farming organized by the Organic Growers School. In 9 days we visited 9 farms, had several speakers address aspects of life (and particularly farming and environmental issues) in Cuba, had a couple of walking tours, ate many delicious farm-to-table type dinners and still had time for a salsa lesson.

When I got home I planned to follow up with a public slideshow, but instead we got the Covid pandemic. I made a series of blogposts, which you can revisit:

My Cuba farming trip. 1/20/20

A Cuban Bean Seed Bank 3/17/20

Finca Marta Agroecological Farm, Cuba 4/28/20

Cuban AgroEcology Tour: La Palma Farm, Pinar del Rio Province 8/4/20

Cuban Agriculture: Finca L’Armonia (Permaculture Farm), Viñales 9/29/20

Cuban Agroecology Tour: Finca Agroecológica El Paraiso, Viñales 10/27/20

Cuba Agroecology: Patio Pelegrin organoponico in Pinar del Rio, Cuba 12/15/20

Cuban Agriculture, Las Terrazas Ecovillage, Artemisa 1/13/21

Cuban Agriculture, French coffee plantation Cafetal Buenavista 3/03/21

Cuban Agroecology: FANJ and La Felicidad Permaculture Garden 3/31/21

Cuban Agriculture, Dinner at the Garden of Miracles restaurant with Rafael Betancourt 4/28/21

The roof garden at the Garden of Miracles Restaurant.
Pam Dawling

And now at last I have completed my slideshow, after begging photos from a couple of my tour group, to cover the gaps in my collection.

You can view the slideshow here:

Cuba Agroecology Tour 2020

Your Chance to go to Cuba

And now I hope I’ve inspired you to consider going on one of the Organic Growers School Cuba Trips in early 2023

https://organicgrowersschool.org/events/travel-cuba/ This link includes a YouTube of testimonials

January 3-12, 2023

April 4-13, 2023

“This 9-day tour of Cuba’s sustainable farms, community gardens, and historical centers provides a rare opportunity to learn about the Cuban food system and learn about alternatives to corporatized agriculture. Participants will have the chance to:

  • Learn from farmers and food activists about Cuba’s transition to agroecological farming practices and its national policies that prioritize sustainable farming and hunger remediation.

  • Connect with farmers, consumers, activists, NGOs, policymakers, and experts working to transform the global food system.

  • Acquire the knowledge and strategies to create just, sustainable, local, and healthy food systems in your own communities.”

Check out the linked presentation for a summary of the January 2022 tour and for a sneak peek of the types of activities involved in the tour. OGS successfully operated a tour group in January 2022. No-one got Covid. OGS brought the first educational trip from the United States to Cuba since the beginning of COVID

Finca Paraiso, Vinales, Cuba. Lettuce bed. Photo Pam Dawling

Please see the OGS website for more information.

On the website you can get your most likely questions answered: legal, financial and health requirements, sample itinerary, reasons to visit Cuba, reasons to go with OGS, reasons to value agroecology, and a one-hour Info session video. The trip includes bus transportation within Cuba, a minimum of 2 meals each day, 9 nights in casas particulares accommodation, a very good ag-knowledgeable tour guide and tour manager, and entry fees to various sight-seeing exhibitions.

Farmer Fernando Funes Monzote showing us the vegetable beds, terraced on contour, at Finca Marta, Artemisa, Cuba
Photo by Pam Dawling

Cuban Agriculture, French coffee plantation Cafetal Buenavista

Coffee bean drying beds at Cafetal Buenavista, Artemisa, Cuba.
Photo Pam Dawling

Cuban Agriculture, Tour of a restored historic early 19th century French coffee plantation (Cafetal) Buenavista, worked by 100 enslaved Africans, Las Terrazas Ecovillage, Artemisa.

This is an episode in the tales of my Agroecology Tour of Cuba in January 2020 with the Organic Growers School. Click the category Cuban Agriculture to see more posts in the series. In particular, refer to my most recent post on Las Terrazas. The Cafetal Buenavista is on the land of that ecovillage and bioreserve.

The master’s house at Cafetal Buenavista coffee plantation, now used as a restaurant.
Photo Pam Dawling

Buenavista is Cuba’s oldest coffee plantation, built in 1801 by French refugees from Haiti. The attic of the master’s house (which is now a restaurant) was used to store the beans until they could be carried down to the port of Mariel by mule.

Cafetal Buenavista plantation final drying floor and sheds.
Photo Pam Dawling

The coffee beans were sun-dried on huge drying beds during the day (top photo), then piled up every night in the center of the drying bed, and covered. If it rained, the beans were bagged up and stored in small low sheds, shown above.

The mill building at Cafetal Buenavista plantation.
Photo Pam Dawling
The coffee mill inside the thatched building at Cafetal Buenavista.
Photo Pam Dawling

The huge tajona (grindstone) that cracked the coffee beans is well restored and does move!

The coffee bean mill at Cafetal Buenavista plantation.
Photo Pam Dawling

Ruins of the quarters of some of the enslaved people held there can be seen alongside the drying beds. They were chained up at night in tiny 8-12 person stone cells built onto the walls of the coffee drying beds.

Cafetal Buenavista plantation. Cells where enslaved coffee workers were shackled at night.
Photo Pam Dawling

We had a talk about slavery with our Cuban tour guide Josetti. A study of the DNA of 2000 Cubans showed widespread genes from indigenous people, Africans, Chinese, Spanish and other Europeans. It’s impossible to tell ancestry from skin color. General guide: “Our mothers were Africans, our fathers European.” There is still individual racism, but it is not institutionalized as it is in the US, Josetti thinks. Slavery was abolished in Cuba in 1865, earlier than in Brazil, for example.

Photo Pam Dawling

The view from the top of the plantation is breathtaking!

For more, see and listen to:

Insight Cuba blog post on Las Terrazas

http://www.touristinyourtownpodcast.com/tag/buenavista-coffee-plantation/ Podcast

Shade-grown slavery

Slavery and Spatial Dialectics on Cuban Coffee Plantations, Theresa A. Singleton

I got a tick bite (was it one of the sterile ones Cuba has introduced to defeat tick-borne diseases? I didn’t get sick, so I don’t know that it wasn’t)

We got back on the bus to return to Havana for our last 3 days. Everyone wanted to stay in beautiful Viñales. We have a farm work project on Monday and a free day Wednesday (we might go to the beach). We returned to Havana, registered at our casas. I went with four others of the group to a small corner café, and spent 3 CUC on pizza and 2 CUC on a beer. The pizza was so big I still had leftovers to take home after I gave one piece away.1 CUC=$1 US.