Aurelio Gómez Silva's farm, a grower from the municipality of Las Tunas, is so welcoming that whoever comes to stay for an hour stays for two or three, without seeing the time pass because his words are fertile, just like the land he cultivates day after day.
She lives in La Mulata, near the community of La Veguita, in the municipality of Las Tunas, and dedicates 60 percent of the land to tobacco cultivation. After the harvest, when the land is bare of aromatic leaves, he plants various crops to feed his family and society.
"I have a total of four hectares that I received in usufruct by Decree Law 357 in 2000. I started with other varieties, but over time, I stuck with Corojo 2006, which has a higher yield and is more resistant to drought. Now I am preparing the soil so that, it takes shape and the plantations come out vigorous and healthy. I hope this will be the case and results will be good because I have not planted for some years."
"The tobacco curing house deteriorated and I had to invest a lot of time and resources to put it back together again. I want to increase the areas, but I have to go little by little. It is complicated to build such a construction and harvest at the same time because it involves a lot of work."
Aurelio was born and raised in the countryside, where he helped his father on the family farm. With him, he learned many secrets of agriculture, of different lines of business. But when he finished his military service, he wanted to turn his life around and stayed in the city, working as a coachman. Then he returned to his origins.
"Here I grow beans, maize, and other crops, interspersed with viands. However, tobacco is my passion. I knew very little about it and what I know I owe to the training and manuals they gave me at the Tobacco Collection, Processing, and Twisting Company."
"It is a complicated crop. Although you gain experience, you have to dedicate a lot of time to get a good harvest. If you go to fumigate, it's at dawn and you have to spend the whole day watering, weeding, and disbudding. It takes a lot of effort."
The farmer, a member of the 35th-anniversary credit and services cooperative, has a guarantee of water, which is a relief in this area with little rainfall. On the other hand, he is concerned about the shortage of labor, which makes it more difficult for him to manage the farm.
He is also saddened by the high incidence of robberies in the surrounding area because "you can't be calm during the day or at night. They steal an animal, a hosepipe, or a turbine, and with these resources, you lose your material goods and sometimes your motivation."
Other crops earn producers more money in less time, and Aurelio is well aware of this. However, he prefers to stick to tobacco, which is a big investment of time and finances. Nevertheless, he plans to plant more beans and maize and for that, he has an irrigation system.
In his scarce free time, he walks the land, as the master's eye fattens the horse, and between each step he designs the future, marking out the spaces for each line. He also organizes the time so that the minutes yield as much profit as the crops that grow from his hands.
