- Cuban family business produces flour from coconut and yucca amid shortages
A Cuban family-run firm creates gluten-free flour from banana, coconut, and yucca on a small farm outside Havana, preferring locally produced products over pricy imports as Cubans seek imaginative solutions to a rising food crisis.
Cuba imports the majority of its food, but revenues have plummeted in the aftermath of the coronavirus pandemic, hampered by tough US sanctions and dwindling tourism, which was long a staple of the Caribbean island economy.
As a result, some, like 38-year-old entrepreneur Gabriel Perez, are looking for alternatives.
“There is a crisis, that is undeniable,” said Perez, who recently sold his home and business to relocate on property on Havana’s outskirts. “But in Cuba it stems in part from a lack of culture around eating the foods that we have at hand.”
He cites Cubans’ desire for rice, pork, and beans, all of which are locally available but require machinery and agricultural inputs to develop on a large scale.
His company, Bacoretto, dries and grinds yucca, rice, banana, and coconut into organic flour that gluten-intolerant consumers enjoy, despite the fact that they have just recently been able to purchase food products customised to their dietary demands in Cuba.
According to Perez, byproducts of their procedures are utilised to manufacture coconut oil, coconut-fiber rope, vinegar, fermented items, and sweets.
Bacoretto is a tiny and specialised company whose products are primarily available in Havana. With an eight-person team, it produces 6 to 8 kilogrammes (13.2 to 17.6 pounds) of flour per week in tiny batches, in addition to byproducts.
Perez said the company has struggled to get finance in cash-strapped Cuba, despite a 2021 decision to eliminate a prohibition on private firms in effect on the island since shortly after Fidel Castro’s 1959 revolution.
Thousands of small enterprises have established themselves in Cuba since 2021, but many face ongoing challenges with finance, infrastructure, supply, and staff in the communist-run country that has long rejected private entrepreneurship.
“To be profitable,” Perez went on to say, “technological capacity needs to be increased and better machinery is needed.”
