Cuba Parks its Tractors and Returns to Oxen

Backgrounder

Dust rises in the fields of the Cuban countryside. It is planting time and farmers are working their fields. But the dust in this field does not come from a tractor — it comes from oxen ploughing the field. Tractors are still around, but the cost of petroleum to run them and spare parts to keep them going, limits their use.

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Learning from the older farmers, many Cuban farmers today plough with oxen. Oxen were used for hundreds of years in Cuba, before the arrival of industrial agriculture. Today, the government encourages the use of oxen. And it supports a breeding program to provide more oxen for Cuba’s farms.

Oxen don’t move as quickly as tractors, but they do have certain advantages. The manager of a state farm in Villa Clara province explained that before using oxen they could only fit two planting cycles into the rainy season. For more than a month each year farmers couldn’t prepare the land because the tractors got stuck in the mud.

But an ox doesn’t have that problem. You can plough the day after it rains, or even while it is raining, if you want. The farm now harvests three crops a year instead of two. Although the yield per harvest is lower, the total yield at the end of the year is higher.

Cuba has now parked about half of its tractors and returned to oxen for ploughing and other farm work. Oxen are less damaging to the soil and most cost effective for small-scale producers. Oxen have helped Cuba through hard times and food shortages.