During the previous crop, a similar objective could not be met due to the lack of tobacco dryers.

14,623 hectares will be planted in the western province of Pinar del Rio for the 2025-2026 tobacco season. This is the official target announced by officials of the state-owned Tabacuba group, quoted by Granma, the daily newspaper of the Cuban Communist Party (PCC).

Last year, authorities also aimed to plant 14,000 hectares of tobacco, but had to revise this figure downward in January 2025 due to a lack of drying sheds to accommodate the tobacco. Ultimately, 10,500 hectares were planted and harvested during the 2024-2025 season, a figure very close to that of the 2023-2024 season and twice that of the 2022-2023 season, which remains to this day the worst in contemporary Cuban history, following the Hurricane Ian, which destroyed almost all the drying sheds in the Vuelta Abajo.

This year again, the number of drying sheds will be crucial to meeting the target. 7,876 casas de tabaco will be needed, according to Tabacuba officials, who specify that to date 6,175 are in working order. “This is the fundamental problem with increasing plantations in the province,” acknowledges Osvaldo Santana Vera, Tabacuba coordinator in the province of Pinar del Rio.

For the entire country, the target is 20,000 hectares, which means that the province of Pinar del Rio accounts for 70% of the tobacco planted in Cuba. In this province, the plan is to plant 10% of the tobacco in October, 55% in November, 30% in December, and leave 5% for the first ten days of January.

The authorities are also announcing a financial incentive system to convince farmers to plant more tobacco.

Photo: © Luc Monnet