Less crop protection products applied – and yet an increase in yield. That’s the welcome result of a project initiated by Bayer CropScience –with the support of the Cuban authorities – at the end of 2008 in the rural community of Mamonal. The main focus of the two-year “Mamonal-project” is to help tomato growers. The intention is to teach them how to practice integrated agriculture, as well as how to use crop protection products safely.
The project involves providing farmers with new protective clothing and training them in the correct handling of crop protection agents, including visits to demonstration plots. They have also been advised as to which of the products they had traditionally been applying against thrips, aphids, whiteflies, Phytophthora, Alternaria, graminaceous weeds and cotton grasses are now considered outmoded. Instead, modern alternatives with improved environmental and human safety profiles were introduced.
At the same time, Bayer CropScience staff have helped the farmers to optimise doses and application intervals for the new products, and have also shown them how to take advantage of the services of beneficial insects such as predatory mites. Finally, the farmers were made aware of the need to apply organic fertilizers and to recycle empty crop protection product containers.
“All of this has allowed the number of insecticide treatments to be reduced by 20 percent, and the number of fungicide treatments by almost a third”, says Carlos Manuel Callejo, Bayer CropScience’s Key Account Manager for tomatoes and other crops in Cuba. This means that the active substance load per hectare has sunk by about 25 percent. Optimizing crop protection in this way also gives a pay-back in terms of harvest. The participating tomato growers were immediately able to increase yields by an average of 25 percent in the first season – from just under 20 to almost 25 tonnes per hectare. Finally, the optimized crop protection and favorable weather conditions allowed the farmers to improve their incomes – and thus the economic situations of their families.
It was obvious right from the start that the programme was going to be popular among the farmers. Following the information events, 232 farmers decided to grow tomatoes – 100 more than were active in the region beforehand. This meant that the tomato-growing area within the Mamonal community also increased – from 270 to just under 500 hectares.
In the meantime, the project is in its second year. “We want to increase the acceptance of integrated agriculture”, comments Alvaro Aguilar, Product Stewardship Manager for Bayer CropScience in Region Central America and the Caribbean. The Mamonal-project is part of the larger AgroVida initiative, through which Bayer CropScience has been promoting the safe and responsible handling of crop protection products in Latin America for some years now. This is the first AgroVida project in Cuba.
Cuban yields can be improved
Despite its current importance, tomato cultivation in Cuba still has considerable potential for improvement. With its 62,000 hectares under tomato cultivation (2008), Cuba is ranked in third place in the Americas by the global Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), behind the USA and Mexico. However, in terms of yield, Cuban growers only achieve a total of 575,000 tonnes (2008), trailing in seventh place behind the USA, Brazil, Mexico, Chile, Canada and Argentina. The reason for this discrepancy: the average yield in Cuba of around nine tonnes a hectare is one of the lowest achieved on the entire continent. For comparison: Canada achieves 97 tonnes and the USA 77 tonnes; the Dominican Republic , Cuba’s neighbor in the Caribbean, achieves a respectable 33 tonnes a hectare. So there is clearly potential for growth in Cuba. It is Bayer CropScience’s hope that the Mamonal-Project will contribute to achieving this.
