The Tainos were farmers, but also lived on hunting and fishing.  They cultivated yucca, corn, sweet potato, leren, peanuts, chilies, yautia, pineapple and tobacco.  The people valued the meat of rodents such as hutias, quemíes and mohíes, in addition to hunting iguanas, snakes, parrots, seagulls and ducks.  By fishing in the sea and the river, they fed on mullet, eel, seabream, goldfish, rock cod, dajao, shrimp, crab, lambi and manatee, among others.  They also enjoyed eating worms, snails, bats, spiders and other insects.

They made a type of bread from yucca called cazabí (today known as casabe).  Its extensive use among the Spanish conquistadors, due to lack of wheat flour, gave it the name “bread of the Indies”.