A truck laden with charcoal leaves the factory of Ceballos Agroindustrial Company, located about 450 km east of Havana in the central province of Ciego de Avila, Cuba, Jan. 31, 2020. Cuba has turned a prickly invasive weed that blights its agricultural landscape into a profitable export that more than pays for its clearing and harvesting. (Photo by Joaquin Hernandez/Xinhua)
CIEGO DE AVILA, Cuba, Feb. 4 (Xinhua) -- Cuba has turned a prickly invasive weed that blights its agricultural landscape into a profitable export that more than pays for its clearing and harvesting.
The sicklebush (dichrostachys cinerea), here called "marabou," has found an export market as a vegetable charcoal.
Cuba's Ceballos Agroindustrial Company, located about 450 km east of Havana in the central province of Ciego de Avila, exported almost 22,000 tons of marabou charcoal to Europe and the United Arab Emirates in 2019, generating revenues of more than 7 million U.S. dollars.
"This is an exportable item that had not been discovered, despite how easy it is to make and also export," said Jorge Sanchez, the company's charcoal specialist.
The natural resource, which had long been considered a costly problem, is now a prized commodity that "is almost free of charge," he said.
"It is very important then to cut the marabou that invades farmland and turn it into the currencies the country needs," he added.
The company buys the charcoal from farmers in Ciego de Avila, as well as the eastern provinces of Camaguey and Santiago de Cuba.
Farmers burn the collected plant in ovens for at least five days. The charcoal is then shipped by truck to a processing center in an old ceramic factory, where it is classified according to the quality required by the clients and packed into sacks of various sizes.
In the past 14 years, the company has exported more than 266,000 tons of charcoal, bringing in about 100 million dollars.
The revenue allowed the company to raise wages and finance other projects, such as planting fruit trees to make juice and puree, among other things.
The charcoal sells for 350 dollars a ton and is considered better than charcoal made of white firewood, because although marabou charcoal needs longer time to be lit, it burns for twice as long.
In 2017, marabou charcoal became the first product exported by a Cuban state-owned enterprise to the United States in more than half a century.
