GAF
Coffee seeks to occupy spaces on the plain
The coffee development of the central province of Sancti Spíritus considers among its priorities to extend the coffee plantations in the plain, with a strategy that aims to leave a hundred hectares planted at the end of the current year's campaign.
The nearly 100 hectares represent 25 percent of the program for the creation of new coffee plantations in the contest, a figure that amounts to 400 hectares and which are mostly concentrated in the mountainous areas of the municipalities of Fomento and Trinidad. Leosvaldo Cruz Duardo, a coffee specialist in the Provincial Delegation of Agriculture in Sancti Spíritus, explained to the ACN that another of the campaign's distinctions will be the beginning of the planting of a clone of a variety of coffee from Viet Nam. Read more: Cuba and Germany: Virtual forum on trade in the agri-food sector He pointed out that initially 80 hectares will be planted with this clone in the two agroforestry entities of the territory and in other settings, especially in the plain; although it meant that in the case of Trinidad, coffee from the Asian country will also occupy spaces in the foothills and in the mountain itself. Cruz Duardo also said that today, in several nurseries, all the positions that will respond to the sowing campaign in the plain are already born, including the 164 thousand of the Vietnamese clone. This novelty imposes other challenges for coffee growers, because according to the specialist, planting technology requires a three-meter distance frame between the plants; meanwhile, he clarified, the hole to insert the posture must be greater than 60 centimeters and a level of organic matter in the background must be incorporated into it before placing the seedling. The coffee planting campaign in this region will add more plantations of the robust variety, as part of a program that seeks to increase production levels in the medium term, a claim also made by the country given the difficult economic situation it faces due to the pandemic of COVID-19 and the intensified blockade of the United States. To this end, the rehabilitation of coffee plantations is intensified, and the use of green manures, organic materials and other dissimilar alternatives to strengthen the plantations is promoted.
