The cultivation of tobacco is confined to the Cibao region, where it was grown by the Indians when the Spaniards landed. It is a crop yielding rapid returns, but cacao has paid so much better that the progress of tobacco culture has been slow. The effort of the countrymen to produce quantity rather than quality has prevented the development of the finer grades and the price paid for Dominican tobacco is low. While the tobacco grown is of inferior quality, there is no reason why it should not be susceptible of improvement as the climatic and soil conditions of the interior valleys are very similar to those of the tobacco regions of Cuba and Porto Rico.
Tobacco is grown mostly by small planters and sold to the large commercial houses of Santiago and Puerto Plata. Practically the entire crop is exported through Puerto Plata. Before the European war the great market for Dominican tobacco was Hamburg. Up to 1907 tobacco was exported only in leaf, but since then a small cigarette industry has developed.
Coffee is another native crop the development of which has been checked by the popularity of cacao. It is also a crop which can be grown with profit on small tracts of land. The coffee bushes flourish in the mountains and are grown under the shade of larger trees. A clearing having been made in the forest, the small coffee trees are planted in rows or irregularly and near each a banana or plantain tree. The latter reach full height within six months and afford shade until guava and other shade trees planted on the field have attained sufficient size. A wait of five years is necessary before the coffee bushes begin to bear, but after that they continue indefinitely every year, the only labor required being that of keeping the plantation clear of brush and picking the berries when they are ripe. The trees grow to a height of six or eight feet; they bloom with a fragrant, white, star-like flower which on withering leaves the green embryo of the berry. When the berry has reached the size of a hazel-nut it turns red and is picked, much of the picking being done by women. The berries are poured into a simple machine which extracts the two coffee beans encased in each berry. The beans are dried in the sun, on the largest plantations in drying machines. They are then transported to the merchants in town, where they are polished in another machine, assorted and bagged for export. The town of Moca owes its name to the fact that the principal coffee plantations lie in its vicinity. Other important coffee districts are Santiago and Bani. About two-thirds of the coffee of the Republic is exported from Puerto Plata.