A base-level farming unit in Pinar del Río goes from producing 0.8 tons per hectare to 8, thanks above all to the supplies, they say
14ymedio, Madrid, July 16, 2026 / Eliecer Silva, head of a state agricultural enterprise in Consolación del Sur, Pinar del Río, is today the unwitting protagonist of a news story on Vietnam.vn. The government portal recounts the story, originally published by Granma, of this man from Pinar del Río, originally published by Granma, whose base-level unit -Agrícola Caribe- has seen its yields multiply since it partnered with the Cuba-Vietnam rice cooperation project. What in the Cuban version is titled “Rebirth in Caribe,” Hanoi presents under a long headline extolling the Asian country’s work.
“Vietnamese experts arrive and help Cuban farmers plant rice using an ‘unusual’ method, resulting in seedlings half a meter tall that multiply yields tenfold.” Thirty-three words, no more, no less, that do a good job of summarizing the benefit of the collaboration. The Cuban base-level unit has gone from producing 0.8 tons per hectare to 8 tons per hectare.
“The Vietnamese have come to give us major help. They’ve gotten us out of a terrible bind,” says Silva. María de las Nieves Sánchez, the company’s director, describes the situation of recent years as “maddening.” “Each season, yields kept dropping; we would plan for a certain number of hectares and we wouldn’t reach it,” she notes. The low point came in 2024, with the aforementioned 0.8 t/ha. In 2025, there was little improvement: 0.9.
Agrícola Caribe then decided to join the bilateral rice project -it is the second enterprise of its kind to do so- and planted 21.7 hectares last September, on an experimental basis. The result has been like the multiplication of the loaves and fishes. The eight-ton yield had “never before been reached here,” says Sánchez.
“So far, we have 158 hectares on the flat terraces and we need to reach 295,” they report. The expansion took place in spring following the impressive results achieved, but in the upcoming dry-season campaign they hope to reach 2,000 hectares, the result of combining the 473 hectares held in usufruct by the independent producers associated with the enterprise.
Sánchez explains the arrangement to the press. The Cubans provide the land, the machinery, and the labor, while the Vietnamese provide technical advice and supplies. The latter has been essential, in the growers’ view, since they had gone years without access to the technology package -fertilizers, fuel, pesticides, and other products needed for cultivation. “We had never had this before,” they say, praising the quality of the supplies. “That’s why this rice stands almost 1.80 meters tall. You can’t even see the workers who go in there to spray.”
The partnership has also created jobs. Planting and fertilizing on this scale used to be done by plane, but the fuel shortage -amid a full-blown fuel siege- has forced it to be done by hand, with the hiring of 200 people from Alonso de Rojas. “Thanks to this project, we have work today,” says one of the workers, Osberto Pedroso.
The bilateral cooperation project between Cuba and Vietnam began in 2002 and had one of its notable chapters in La Sierpe, in Sancti Spíritus, where production was successful for years and helped many base-level units improve their yields. In 2023, however, the Asian technicians withdrew from the site, weary, according to accounts, of Cuban inefficiency. The fuel shortage and lack of labor officially finished off the partnership. At its peak there, yields reached five tons per hectare, when three tons was the norm in the area. Just one year later, production fell by 62%, and in 2025 the Vietnamese returned to resume the project, though in a more controlled manner.
The experience does not discourage the farmers of Pinar del Río, who remain focused on their own territory. Silva takes pride in the fact that Cuban personnel handled both the planting and the fertilizing, and believes that this, together with the results, breaks the myth that Cubans cannot do the work well. “Where there is no organization and discipline in the work, there are no results, no matter what you throw at the field,” he warns.
The project -at the national level- differs from the one under way in Los Palacios, where a private company, Agri VMA, was the first foreign company to obtain a 1,000-hectare lease, with plans to reach 5,000 hectares within three years. There, too, very high results are being achieved, with more than 7.2 tons per hectare, compared with 2 to 2.5 tons for producers elsewhere on the island.
Translated by GH.
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