Cuba moves to stir coffee sector

SANTIAGO DE CUBA, Cuba - The government hopes to revive the country's once-thriving coffee industry by offering attractive wages in harvest season and replanting old plantations with low yields.

For each 2-kilogram can of picked coffee cherries, pickers earn 161 Cuban pesos ($6) for the arabica variety and $4 for the robusta, both of which are cultivated in Cuba's mountainous regions.

"During the harvest, every worker earns an average monthly salary of $226, which contributes to increasing quality and efficiency, and spurs personnel to make a bigger effort to earn more," said Victor Zaldivar, manager of the Coffee and Cocoa Processing Center in Tercer Frente, in eastern Santiago de Cuba province, home to the largest production area of coffee in the country.

In 2016, many workers earned over $3,774 annually, which raised living standards and improved housing in the area, and slowed the exodus to the cities, said Zaldivar.

Employees of state-owned companies usually earn only about $20 a month on average, far from enough to deal with rising living costs.

"With larger personal incomes, people here are building and renovating their homes, and improving the material and spiritual welfare of their families, and the social well-being of the municipality," Zaldivar said.

Coffee picker Yamile Sosa, 21, said workers like herself are motivated by rising wages.

"That's why this year more coffee has been harvested," she said.

The 2013-2014 harvest season yielded 6,211 tons of coffee, well below target, mostly due to devastation caused by Hurricane Sandy in 2012. But the damage led the government to replant old plantations.

Since a coffee bush needs four years to mature, renewed plantations should begin to bear fruit this season.

The plan now is to produce at least 15,000 tons a year, still far from the 24,000 tons needed to meet domestic demand and forgo the 8,000 tons imported annually from Vietnam, but it's a start.

Xinhua