Cuba
No fuel? No food? Amid crisis in Cuba, there’s no shortage of faith
MATANZAS, CUBA — René Sánchez Blanco sailed eight hours on…
Faith sustains Cuban farmer during time of crisis
Crops benefit church members as well as orphans and elderly people in the community.
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LIMONAR, CUBA — It’s a tough time for Christian farmer Jorge Sánchez.
A U.S. blockade on oil shipments to this Caribbean island nation has spurred Cuba’s deepening humanitarian crisis.
“People are worried a lot about the stuff that they have to add to their crops, like insecticides, because they can’t find it,” Sánchez said, speaking through a Spanish-language translator.
Cuba in crisis: Read all the stories in the special package
But Sánchez relies on a special means of keeping the bugs away.
“I do pest control at night,” he said. “What I do is, I come and pray in my fields, and God takes care of all of that stuff.”
Sánchez grows beans, onions, plantains, sweet potatoes, tomatoes and other vegetables at a church-operated farm about 20 miles south of the provincial capital of Matanzas in west-central Cuba.
Jorge Sánchez learns drip irrigation techniques at his farm in Limonar, Cuba.
The 17-year-old farm started small and grew after Tony Fernandez, longtime minister for the Versalles Church of Christ in Matanzas, baptized a rural couple.
The couple had lost two adult sons — one in a bicycle accident and another who died by suicide.
Jorge Sánchez, the couple’s third son, was “living a wild life of drinking and chasing women,” the minister recalled when The Christian Chronicle first visited the farm a few years ago.
But like his parents, Sánchez became a devoted Christian.
“No turning back, no turning back,” he sang gleefully in Spanish as he trekked through a field in 2023.
Jorge Sánchez works at the farm.
Maximum yields, minimum water
The farm produces crops to feed church members as well as orphans and elderly people in the community.
“I want to be able to provide a balanced meal to the people,” Sánchez said of his diverse range of produce. “I don’t want a whole lot of one thing. I want different things.”
A U.S. mission group that came to support and encourage Christians in Cuba visited the farm this past weekend. Two global ministries — Herald of Truth and One Kingdom — organized the trip.
Bill Orange, an elder of the Pegram Church of Christ, southwest of Nashville, Tenn., demonstrated a concept known as Farming God’s Way.
“This type of farming might work for some of you,” Orange, a former missionary to Liberia and Fiji, said as he taught drip irrigation techniques.
Bill Orange explores the church-owned farm in Limonar, Cuba, about 20 miles south of the provincial capital of Matanzas.
Drip irrigation uses buckets and hoses to deliver a tiny but constant “drip” of water to plants. It’s designed to produce maximum crop yields with minimal water usage and is especially helpful in drought conditions.
Orange emphasized that he could learn a lot about farming from Sánchez but said drip irrigation might be helpful in certain situations.
Related: No fuel? No food? Amid crisis in Cuba, there’s no shortage of faith
Sánchez welcomed the advice.
“He taught me a very easy way to use the water,” Sánchez said. “I know how to plant, but this is so helpful for the watering.
“I’m a very simple man,” the farmer added. “I don’t like technology. It just stresses me out. And this is so simple.”
A scene at the church-operated farm Jorge Sánchez manages in Limonar, Cuba.
Fernandez said he hopes Orange can return to Cuba soon — perhaps before the three-month rainy season begins in May — to provide additional instruction.
“Because of the shortage of food, we’ve really been working on helping people start growing food at their own homes,” Fernandez said.
With the lack of fuel, “it’s getting harder to bring the food in from the farm,” the minister added. “This — being able to grow crops with much less water — is really important.”
Orange, who traveled to Cuba with Marilyn, his wife of 55 years, said he’s eager to come back.
Related: ‘Cuban people love the American people’
“I tell people all around the world that I have mud in my blood,” Orange said. “You can’t get it out. I was raised on a farm.”
In that respect, Orange and Sánchez are kindred spirits.
“I was born in the fields,” Sánchez said.
Church members help tend to the farm that Jorge Sánchez manages.
‘God is going to find a way’
For his part, Sánchez keeps praying that God will provide a solution for Cuba’s fuel scarcity.
“You can see for yourself that we have a bunch of stuff that should have already been picked,” he said. “But if we pick it and just leave it there because we don’t have the fuel to take it to the city, then it’s just going to go to waste.”
But he remains undeterred.
Cuba’s fuel shortage has complicated efforts to take produce from the rural farm to the city.
“I have always learned to deal with difficult things like the dry season and lack of stuff, so it doesn’t really affect me,” he said. “Nevertheless, seeing the stuff there and knowing that people need it, it’s difficult to deal with. But I know that God is going to find a way.”
Sánchez lifted his pointing finger toward the sky.
And he smiled with confidence.
“If this fuel problem is not going to get fixed,” he said, “then I know that God is going to send us an electric car fueled by solar power, and that’s going to be our solution.”
BOBBY ROSS JR. is Editor-in-Chief of The Christian Chronicle. He traveled to Cuba to report this story. Reach him at [email protected].
