Vietnamese rice expert Tran Thi Tham checks seed quality (Photo: VNA)

“Seeing these fields, heavy with grain and beautiful as a painting, with yields surpassing past seasons, I knew we had done something meaningful,” Tham said.

Tham is part of a 15-member Vietnamese crew working for the final year of the fifth phase of a Viet Nam-Cuba rice production project. Landing in Havana in November 2024 after a 30-hour flight, they were greeted with an airport plunged into darkness by a power outage, with immigration officers processing paperwork by flashlight. “I then realised the scale of difficulties here”, Tham said.

Tasked with reviving agriculture across three central Cuban provinces, Tham faced a sector on its knees. Fields lay fallow amid shortages of fuel, electricity, and irrigation, with blackouts dragging on for 20 hours daily. Overplanted rice fields, riddled with weeds, often went unharvested due to fuel-less machinery. Still, Tham saw a silver lining: “The fertile soil and mild climate are perfect for crops".

Nguyen Chi Vuong, head of a Vietnamese team in Sancti Spiritus province, pinpointed outdated techniques as a key obstacle. Local farmers’ reliance on sowing dry rice seeds into flooded fields demanded up to 171kg per ha, far above optimal levels, leading to poor germination and wasted resources. The light loam soil, prone to nutrient loss without a plow pan, compounded the problem.

Undeterred, the team introduced advanced techniques, advising on crop selection, seed production, and intensive farming models. Five months later, their efforts bore fruits. “Our rice models thrived”, Tham said.

Language gaps were bridged with ingenuity. “We had interpreters, but we also used gestures, slang, and smiles what we called ‘body language'”, Vuong said.

Pham Van Thuan, the delegation’s leader, stressed the mission’s deeper purpose. “We did not bring just seeds, but our hearts,” he said. “Our greatest success is seeing Cubans confidently adopt these techniques, moving toward food self-sufficiency”.