Introduction to Cuba’s Rice Harvest
With a deep rumbling, the massive threshing wheel of the Reichelfer presses through the densely packed green stems. The plants disappear into the stomach of the machine, where rice grains are separated from their shells and the straw is thrown back onto the field. Some workers watch the process from the field. After a few rounds, the combine harvester moves aside and transfers the harvested rice through a long pipe to the bed of a waiting truck – then it goes out again.
Harvest Time in Los Palacios
It is the harvest time in the fields of Los Palacios, a sleepy small town in the southeastern part of the province of Pinar del Rio in Cuba. The silos and an aging rice mill shimmer in the blatant sun on the horizon, and what looks like a picturesque post-card scene could prove to be crucial for nutritional security in Cuba. The fields near Los Palacios belong to the Cubanacan Farm, which are operated by the state enterprise empresa agro industrial de granos los palacios.
Foreign Investment in Cuban Agriculture
After Fidel Castro’s successful Communist Revolution in 1959, all foreign landowners were expropriated. But last year the Cuban government took an unprecedented step by granting a foreign company the right to maintain arable land on the communist islands. The first foreign company that received a rental agreement for arable land was the Vietnamese Agrar -VMA, a private agricultural society that grows near Los Palacios Reis.
The Cuban Rice Output Decreases
The rental construction of arable land to the Vietnamese investor is still owned by the Cuban state, is bound to a longer crisis in the Cuban agricultural sector, which is caused by a general decline in the country’s economy. Fertilizers, pesticides, fuel and spare parts are scarce and a large part of the equipment is outdated or broken. In addition, a rigid system of mandatory state quotas offers little incentive for improving production. What has recently come into play are environmental factors such as soil salinization, drought and hurricanes who have reduced Cuban agriculture that lead even closer to the edge of the collapse.
The Need for Resources
Ariel Garcia Perez, General Director of Empresa Agro -Industrial de Granos, admits that his company is currently missing the kind of resources that are required for the cultivation of rice. "I mean fertilizers, herbicides, fungicides, insecticides and also seeds – everything essentially for the rice production," he told the reporter on one of the company’s rice fields that were harvested. Perez said that only about 6,000 hectares of rice fields are currently being grown due to the bottlenecks, of around 23,000 hectares that the company could maintain as a whole.
Rice as a Staple in Cuba
Rice is one of the staple in Cuba. Last year, the country produced around 80,000 tons of rice – a little more than 11% of its domestic demand. Six years ago, production was more than three times higher, according to official data published by the Cuban State newspaper. In order to achieve domestic consumption, Kuba had to increase imports.
Optimized Seeds and Better Know-How
The Cuban government of Vietnam has asked for help in the efforts to promote domestic travel edition because the two countries have been maintaining friendly relationships for decades and, especially in recent years, has strengthened agricultural cooperation. For Perez, however, the Los Palacios project is a completely new measure of partnership. Privately obsessed AGRI VMA manages the rental agreement largely independently of government interventions, whereby the business activity is based on a business contract.
The Vietnamese Company’s Contribution
The company has brought Kuba its own resources, technical experts and seeds from hybrid varieties, which were developed in Vietnam. Cuba will lack the foreign currency reserves required for such investments of the continuing US sanctions and recently of the collapse of tourism during Covid-19 pandemic. The Vietnamese company has 40 Cuban employees for the company committed-a further first in a country in which employment is usually conveyed by state agencies.
Promising First Harvest
The Cuban-Vietnamese partnership company began last autumn with a test phase that covered 16 hectares with Vietnamese seeds. In the meantime, AGRI VMA was granted so -called usage rights of over 1,000 hectares of rice. With more than 900 hectares in 2025, the previous results are "encouraging," said Perez and mainly attributed the success to Vietnamese seeds and fertilizer. The first 44 hectares of the fields of Los Palacios showed 296 tons of Paddy rice, which is 6.75 tons per hectare, and almost four times the 1.7 tons per hectare, which were harvested elsewhere in Cuba in 2024.
Future Plans
The harvested rice belongs to Agri VMA and the Cuban state buys it. Garcia Perez argues that the main goal was to "replace imports". "We don’t have to bring a rice from Vietnam to Cuba. The rice stays here and Cuba buys him from Vietnam. That is cheaper," he said. The arable land in Los Palacios was rented to the Vietnamese company for an term of three years and initially comprises 1,000 hectares to expand to 5,000 hectares. But Garcia Perez already thinks much larger and dreams of the partnership with Vietnam "extended to other Cuban provinces".
