Recently Laritza Brizuela López, the only rice producer in the province of Santiago de Cuba and resident of the municipality of Contramaestre, announced the project she is implementing today on her farm.
The combination of rice cultivation with fish farming, specifically with red tilapia or creole tilapia, allows this farmer from the Ruta Invasora Credit and Service Cooperative (CCS) to share her experiences.
The variety of rice I plant is the reform, which is three months and twenty days, that is why it cannot be put on the terrace as fry, you have to put the fish already developed, that is, two or three centimeters so that in the time they are going to develop, which are more or less five months, they have time to grow and one obtains the yield we want (…). The selected land must be flat and have a good water inlet and outlet. Why? First of all, let’s talk about rice, because after the rice is sown, that is to say, after it gets wet, we must wait 15 days for the grain to start to dry out and have little water so that the rice can develop and have time to develop when the tilapia is planted and both productions can reach the expected results (….).
Brizuela López argued that it is not so laborious but it is not easy either because you have to put conditions to that terrace, you have to prepare a good feeding of the rice itself. The feed that I give him is the same rice powder, you can also add chicken manure.
At the time of preparing the land, it must be done in such a way that inside the terrace of the dam there is a space of at least two meters that must be deeper than where the rice is because in that little channel that we make inside they must adapt to eat, in front of there a mesh must be put because as they are so many when they go to feed in that channel they jump a lot and then we must put a mesh so that they do not get out of what is the land of the water where they are.
Regarding the final result of this combination, the producer said that after three months they are fed, they come and at that moment the fishing line is thrown and the fish is caught. From there the water is removed and 20 days after the fish is harvested, the rice is harvested.
Laritza Brizuela López is one of the many farmers in our country who contributes to food production. This project aims to give these productions to the people, to my town, my municipality and province. Many rice producers are joining the project and that is why it is the alternative of these two productions in one, because as rice producers in the municipality of Contramaestre are increasing, they already have a good alternative to collect two productions in one.
