The lands of the Ramón Naranjo Agricultural Production Cooperative (CPA, by its acronym in Spanish), in the community of Monte Grande, in the municipality of Majibacoa, only receive the water that falls from the sky and the rains are so few that there is no choice but to look for alternatives to guarantee production.

Las Tunas, Cuba: This is a sugarcane-growing unit in most of its lands, but they also diversified their crops with mainly viands and grains. However, little by little the ratio between hectares and tons was decreasing, according to Jorge del Monte Rodríguez, researcher and CPA associate.
"Yields in the sugarcane and agricultural sectors are not the best, because the soils have been losing their nutrients. They spend the whole year under the incidence of the sun's rays, plus the intense drought and extreme events, so they have been stripped."
Given this objective situation and the need to produce food, it was decided to take advantage of the benefits of two leguminous plants, taking into account that these varieties give a significant improvement to the soil, as they are nitrogen fixers.
"We are talking about canavalia and black mucuna, species that tolerate shade, are rustic and work well in intercropping with other crops. From the experience we've had, I think the future of agriculture will necessarily have to be with the use of these plants.
"In the plantain area, we plant canavalia, which quickly covers the soil and starts to improve it. In a natural way it dries between 170 and 180 days and leaves a cover of straw on the soil, so there is a saving of labor and decreases the intensive work to the land, another of the causes that deteriorate it.
"The black mucuna is a climber and we intercrop it with corn, one of the crops that is best associated with it. As it grows, we have to manually lower the tips of the branches until the corn goes over it and soon it completely covers the soil".
After the application of these agro-ecological techniques, the cooperative members of "Ramón Naranjo" are happy, and not for nothing, because they have seen that the physical and chemical properties of the soil have improved substantially, the soil keeps humidity, has no weeds and can be cultivated again quickly.
In addition, according to Del Monte Rodríguez, at harvest time the products are more vigorous, with higher yields per hectare. That is why they are extending these practices to a garden of varieties in sugarcane cultivation, to obtain seeds.
"We are studying canavalia since mucuna would become very entangled in the cane plantations. Now the units do not have seeds of certified varieties and we plant what appears; but we do not possess any guarantee of quality.
"We still don't have concrete results. However, we are already obtaining a more vigorous and competitive seed of the Cuba-266 variety and the idea in the immediate future is to continue research in other areas until we reach the conclusions we expect."
In the province of Las Tunas, with regular and bad soils in almost all the territory, they give special attention to Agro-ecology, an activity promoted both by the producer units and by the National Association of Small Farmers (ANAP, by its acronym in Spanish).
"We try to produce taking care of the environment, with the science and experience of the farmers. That is why we plant according to the phases of the moon and use equipment such as the matraca, to protect the land, in addition to animal traction."