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Home > Media Quik Stop > In The News > Organic Farming Flourishes in Cuba |
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Organic Farming Flourishes in CubaJerry Perkins
Original Article: desmoinesregister.com  Printer Friendly  Email this Article
Havana, Cuba - They call it "la esquina verde," or "the green corner." It's in a residential neighborhood of Havana, where Ydelio Yzquierdo and two other men grow lettuce, parsley, basil and a variety of other vegetables on a plot about a city block long and a half-block wide. It's one of several thousand organic gardens - known here as organoponicos - that have sprung up in Cuba in the past 10 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union led to a severe downturn in Cuban food production. As a result, Cuba's organic food movement has made the country a world leader in low-input sustainable agriculture. Organoponicos range from less than an acre to six acres. It's estimated that Cuba, an island country about the size of Pennsylvania, has more than 81,000 acres of organoponicos. The gardens produce about 250 pounds of food a year for each of Cuba's 11 million people and have generated 300,000 jobs, said Peter Rosset, co-director of Food First and the Institute for Food and Development Policy in Oakland. "When I first came here in 1993, there was none of this," Rosset said in Havana. "This came from nothing."Rosset was among 90 U.S. farmers, educators and others recently visiting Cuba to study its agriculture. Denise O"Brien, an organic farmer from Atlantic and a participant in the tour, said she ranks Cuba's organic agriculture at the top of the world. "The quality of their produce is consistently high, which shows they have the infrastructure in place," O"Brien said. "It's really quite remarkable."Cuba's economy and food production dropped precipitously after the Soviet Union stopped sending its one-time communist ally massive subsidies, provided since the 1959 revolution toppled dictator Fulgencio Batista. The economic calamity worsened with the U.S. trade embargo, which banned trade and travel between the two countries until food and medicine were exempted several years ago. Cubans euphemistically refer to the post-Soviet collapse of their economy as "the Special Period." Before that, Cuba's state-owned and state-run agricultural enterprises were similar to large corporate farms in California. The Cuban state farms tilled extensive tracts of land with large machinery, burning Soviet-supplied oil to run the farm equipment and irrigation pumps and using petroleum-based chemicals to control pests and fertilize crops. When the Soviets turned off the oil spigot, food production crashed and the Cuban population's daily caloric and protein intake dropped 30 percent during the 1990s, compared to a decade earlier. Out of necessity, things changed. For the first time, Rosset said, a large-scale, mono-cropping, export-oriented farming system was converted to an alternative food production system using low-input, sustainable techniques. Cuba's agricultural scientists had been researching organic farming before the Special Period, but the government was caught off guard when organoponicos started sprouting spontaneously. "It was a push from the bottom and the government really didn't know what to do until it realized just how much food the organoponicos could produce," Rosset said. "Now, the scientists are scrambling to stay up with the farmers."Urban agriculturalists can earn as much as $200 a month, Rosset said, which is 10 times what a doctor makes in Cuba. "There are millionaire farmers by Cuban standards," he said.The agricultural curriculum in the universities and vocational high schools in Cuba has been completely revamped to reflect the change from a high-input, industrialized agriculture to a low-input, organic system, Rosset said. Vocational agricultural high schools are producing biological pesticides that they sell. Income from the sales provides as much as 50 percent of some schools' budgets. Rosset said the development of organoponicos is just one way Cubans have restructured their agriculture. In 1993, farmers markets were allowed. In 1994, the government broke up 75 percent of the state farms and gave the land to farmers who organized into production cooperatives. Although Cubans are hesitant to release ag statistics, Rosset said, production has increased at least 100 percent for some crops and 200 percent for others. The Cuban government eventually hopes to divest itself of all agricultural enterprises except for livestock and crop genetics, he said. Food grown at Havana's green corner goes to a workers" enterprise, which established the garden eight years ago. The enterprise buys seed, organic crop protection products, natural fertilizers and technical assistance from a "tienda consultoria," or consulting store in the neighborhood. "We take our produce to the workers' center and we can sell what's left over to the public," said Yzquierdo, who taught agriculture at a vocational school before becoming an organic gardener.On a recent Sunday, a steady stream of customers stopped by the green corner to buy lettuce, broccoli and other vegetables right out of the field. Yzquierdo and the other two farmers earn a salary, plus incentives based on production. He likes his job. "I always worked in agriculture," Yzquierdo said. "We don't use any chemicals and only organic fertilizer, so the workers eat fresh, healthy food all year round and they feel better."We earn a good wage, and we are doing a good thing. We feel very good about this." |
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