Background: Vinales Valley, the World Heritage landscape that grows Cuba's tobacco

Background

Cuba's farm exports are in the news again as the country presses its trade case abroad, and the valley that grows its tobacco is a World Heritage property in its own right. Vinales Valley was inscribed on the World Heritage List in 1999 as a cultural landscape, under criterion (iv). It lies in the Province of Pinar del Rio. Its signature feature is a set of dome-like limestone outcrops, called mogotes, which rise as high as 300 m. The property covers 13,200 ha. Tobacco is still raised there by traditional methods, including animal traction. About 92 per cent of the land is privately owned, and 30 per cent of it is held by individual farmers. The management plan for the property runs to 67 projects across nine sub-programmes.