Farming and Sustainability Trip to Cuba

By  Kyndal Coleman, FJAR Lab Member

I had the honor to spend five days in Cuba learning about farming, sustainability and Afro-Cuban culture with ReglaSOUL, a community organization committed to promoting sustainable agriculture, preserving traditional African knowledge and connecting Black people across the diaspora through the land and our shared histories. ReglaSOUL regularly hosts workshops and since 2023 has hosted a Farming & Sustainability program that immerses participants in the sovereign food system and the expanding local and international community that they’re building.

My short time there was packed with experiences that I’ll cherish forever. I wrapped my arms around a sacred two-hundred year old Ceiba tree where enslaved Africans brought to the island sought refuge as it reminded them of the Baobab tree in West Africa.I worked land that was once a coffee plantation, now reclaimed as Finca Àroḱo by the Regla Soul family, familiarizing myself with the rhythm of clearing ground with a machete and planting herb seeds. I drank honey straight from a Meliposa beehive on Finca Tungasuk in Caimito. I danced under the stars, ate fresh fruits and rode horse back in the Artemisa region where escaped Africans once formed communities of resistance known as cimmarónes around the mountains. I saw how this lineage reflected in the faces of the locals there, faces that looked like mine. I learned from elders who fiercely preserve afro-cuban culture, food-ways and religion and I visited several farms, organoponicos and community gardens witnessing first hand the great efforts people are undertaking to create food sovereignty for their communities amidst many challenges.

My time in Cuba was deeply transformative to say the least. I’m awed by the way the Regla Soul Family stewards both land and community, as they practice a way of life that makes the two one in the same. After leaving two thoughts run through my mind: the first, Earth is endlessly abundant when we work with it and the second, how might I create this way of life back home in west Georgia.

Photo credit: Kyndal Coleman. Red Okra grown on Finca Aroko on what once was a coffee plantation in Soroa, Cuba.