Marabou and Cuban farmers

Across three provinces in Cuba, farmers have so far succeeded in eradicating more than 5,100 hectares of an invasive weed (Dichrostachys cinerea) called marabou or “sickle bush” – A fast-growing, woody bush covered by thorns, marabou forms dense thickets, making cultivation almost impossible.

The farmers are in the process of establishing forestry, agroforestry and silvopastoral systems on over 6,500 hectares of land, cultivating trees, shrubs and agricultural crops, as well as livestock on the same plots. These practices help boost soil fertility, as well as remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere, contributing to climate change mitigation and adaptation.

In the town of Corralillo, in the province of Villa Clara in central Cuba, also, Mariano Quintero Almeida works eight hours a day in the hot sun on the farm he calls El despertar (or “the awakening”). He’s not complaining. In fact, he is pleased.

However, when Mariano was given the land three years ago, the thought of scratching anything more than a bare living from this 67.5-hectare property seemed unattainable.

El despertar farm was covered almost completely by marabou.

“Specialized machinery is essential for cutting marabou because it’s a very strong plant with many thorns,” Mariano explains. “If the work is not done correctly, the marabou will sprout again from its roots and return even stronger than before. In six months, it will have overtaken double the land it occupied previously.”

Mariano says decades of unsustainable cattle ranching in Corralillo had led to overgrazing, soil degradation and erosion, making the land susceptible to infestation by marabou. Over the years, property after property had been overrun, displacing livestock and agriculture and transforming the community.

“Jobs disappeared, and people migrated to other towns or cities,” Mariano remembers. “All of my neighbours had to remove their livestock and started making charcoal and selling firewood because they couldn’t work the land.”

“There are very few farms here that are not infested,” he elaborates. “Only a very few people know how to work the marabou. Others decided to apply chemical herbicides that later caused them problems in cultivating livestock or agriculture.”

The problem is not isolated to Corralillo. The marabou weed covers vast tracts of once-productive land around Cuba. In 2020, the Cuban government and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) began implementing a project, financed by the Green Climate Fund (GCF), to help manage the situation.

The overall aim of the USD 120 million project is to develop more sustainable and climate change-resilient agrifood systems in areas covered mostly by marabou and degraded pastureland. Cuba, a Small Island Developing State, is particularly vulnerable to the effects of climate change. The provinces of Villa Clara, Matanzas and las Tunas have experienced recurring droughts, soil degradation and salinity.

Under the project, smallholder farmers in those three provinces received machinery, including tractors, brush cutters, rotavators and ploughs. More than 4,500 farmers, including 900 women, have received training. Mariano says project personnel explained how the machinery worked and its capabilities ahead of time, but seeing it set to work on the marabou was incredible.

“They are impressive machines,” he says. “We were overjoyed to see the light at the end of the tunnel.”

Mariano explains that farmers are now able to clear the same amount of marabou in a day that on their own would have taken a month. And the work itself is more effective, ploughing the marabou biomass into the soil, so the soil benefits.

“Before we worked from sunrise to sunset with axes and machetes, the marabou thorns tearing our arms and clothes,” Mariano says. “We could plant small plots that gave us just enough for our family’s use. Now we can farm larger tracts of land and help the community with the crops we are planting. It has made a big difference.”

The farmers are now producing meat, milk, vegetables, fruit and grains in an environmentally sustainable manner. Mariano himself is now growing a variety of crops on El despertar farm, including cassava, corn, squash, sorghum, sunflower, sesame, peanuts and beans. And he has other plans too. He hopes to grow fruit trees and introduce jersey and zebu dairy cattle that can withstand the heat and drought conditions in Corralillo well into the future.

“The project has already had tangible results, which for us have been a miracle that I hope will multiply and never end,” Mariano says. “Before this, we had dreams, but this project has taught us to make our dreams come true.”

This FAO project is the first of its kind financed by the Green Climate Fund in Cuba and one of 20 high-impact projects in FAO’s USD 1.2 billion GCF portfolio. By 2027, the project aims to introduce agroforestry practices on 36,000 hectares of land, mitigating 2.7 million tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions and helping 52,000 family farmers in Cuba improve their food security, nutrition and livelihoods.

Source: the FAO News and Media office, Rome

– global bihari bureau