It has been demonstrated that two crops a year of the highest grade of peanuts can be raised in Cuba. It is claimed that the largest recorded production to the acre of the nut has been secured by a Cuban planter. There are great possibilities in this industry, but it does not appear to be systematically carried on anywhere in the Island, and the peanut has no place in the statistics of exports. Mention has been made elsewhere of Cuba’s great need of comparatively small manufacturing enterprises and the benefits that might be expected to accrue from them. The peanut affords an opportunity in this direction. It is practically certain that several factories for the extraction of the oil and the manufacture of the butter could be run in the Island with profit, especially if the factories maintained their own plantations for the supply of the raw material.
None of the vegetables are cultivated to the extent which they might be with profit. Cuba should export fresh vegetables in large quantities to the New York market, where the winter and spring demands are insatiable. Cucumbers, radishes, onions, lettuce, and other table delicacies grow all the year round in the Island. And instead of producing and shipping them, as she should, Cuba is even importing cabbage. The Chinese truck-gardeners are the only people in the Island who appear to have any understanding of intensive and careful cultivation, if we except a few foreigners who have not yet had sufficient experience to produce the results which they are aiming at, and which they will doubtless achieve in time.
All classes of Cubans eat quantities of plantain. The vegetable is rarely absent from the table, where it appears in all manner of forms,—dried and fried, baked and boiled. The banana is also consumed in large quantities and in various forms. There are a great number of varieties of the fruit, the best known being the “Manzano” and the “Johnson.” The latter is the variety that is cultivated most extensively for export. The banana industry is an important factor in Cuba’s commerce, but its development is due entirely to the fact of the cultivation having been taken in hand by foreign capital and conducted under foreign direction. The demand for bananas might have continued until Doomsday without the Cubans having taken advantage of the obvious opportunity afforded by it. The United States takes one million dollars’ worth or more of bananas from Cuba every year.
Commercial fruit culture in Cuba was only commenced in late years and, if the banana business be left out of consideration, is still in a backward state of development. The several colony enterprises of American and Canadian land companies have had for their principal objects the sale and cultivation of fruit lands. On the whole these projects have been unsuccessful viewed from the standpoint of the settler. This has been due to a variety of causes which will be considered in the following chapter. Although various marketable fruits have grown wild in Cuba for centuries the natives made little or no effort to turn them to commercial account.
In the past few years pineapples have been systematically raised with profit. The Cuban product is particularly hardy and of an excellent
GATHERING COCOANUTS.
quality. The piña blanca is the sweetest variety, but it does not keep well and is therefore not adapted to exportation. The piña morada is smaller, more scaly, and less juicy than the former. It has, however, greater resisting qualities and represents almost the entire export of this fruit, whilst the piña blanca meets the domestic demand. The United States market takes several hundred thousand dollars’ worth of pineapples annually from Cuba.