It’s no news that Gabo Pérez achieves whatever he sets out to. This young entrepreneur, who became an agricultural producer during the pandemic, has been investigating the different crops grown on his farm in Guanabacoa for several years to see what new products he can “invent.”
Bacoretto’s artisan flours (coarse and fine) made from banana, rice, carob and cassava have been on sale for a little over a week.
“One of the first rules for adapting to a new site is to know as much detail as possible about the nearby ecosystems. We made an inventory of the fauna we had on the farm and my mother, my two sisters and I began to research online how we could use each species of plants. I wrote down some of the uses and discarded those that did not apply to the area, either because of humidity or the lack of a specific tool,” Gabo explained.
On the label of the bags of flour, the latest product launched on the market, you can read: “Dear person who just received this bag, we hope you find the contents useful, we want you to enjoy these artisan flours as much as we enjoyed creating them. We have added 20% more in case you need it, we know that when you create something tasty you can never have enough.”
Gabo told Negolution that each flour has different uses due to its characteristics, although all of are “strong flours, with a medium to high level of fiber and do not contain gluten.”
“These flours are used as the main ingredient in baked goods, as a thickener for broths and soups, as cereals, and are widely used in cosmetology,” he noted.
All the ingredients are natural and organic. The team uses dried coconuts from a nearby farm, which are a particular type brought from Baracoa in the 1980’s, with a thick and juicy mass.
“The bananas are from our own production, green plantains that grow all year round, the yucca we buy from nearby farms or from neighbors who want to sell us the leftover. There is a neighbor who leaves the yucca to grow for a year, and it grows more than a meter.
The raw materials are dried in the sun, ground with homemade grinders and sifted “with strainers that we bought at the Cuevita fair for 60 Cuban pesos,” the young entrepreneur explained.
“So far, production has been on demand from customers, as they order, we add them to a consecutive list and we provide updates on what stage of production their flours are at. We only have a retail format because of our production capacity; right now we are creating our first processing center.”
Gabo is committed to natural products because he believes that they offer more probabilities of success and sustainability in the long term, for which he is working together with the municipal government of Guanabacoa in the creation of a Local Development Project under the Bacoretto brand.
“We are in working in line with the local strategy plan, by “Increasing food production, its processing and preservation capacity, favoring the productive coordination between the different economic actors of the municipality. It is useful, and above all we are interested in the experience of progressing in full using local products under the circular economy model.”
Gabo assured that among the products on his to-do list are: cassava peel yogurt, coconut butter, cañandonga syrup, carob ice cream and coconut shell activated carbon: noting that “we are still researching and testing.”
