INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS - LOOKING GLASS NEWS | |
Cuba's Agricultural Revolution an Example to the World |
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by Andrew Buncombe Seattle Post-Intelligencer Entered into the database on Sunday, August 13th, 2006 @ 13:30:07 MST |
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To the right lay revolutionary tomatoes and to the left lay revolutionary lettuces,
while in the glass in my hand, filled to the brim and frothing with vitality,
was the juice from revolutionary mangoes. It was thick, unfiltered and fabulously
sweet. It was also organic. "Yes, it is very good. It's all natural," said Miguel Salcines Lopez,
his brow dotted with sweat from the midday sun, as he raised a glassful to his
lips. "Growing food in this way is much more interesting. It is much more
intelligent." Almost five decades after the now ailing Fidel Castro and his comrades
overthrew the dictator Fulgencio Batista and seized power in Cuba, another revolution,
largely unnoticed by most visitors and tourists, is well under way on this Caribbean
island. And Salcines and his small urban farm at Alamar, an eastern suburb of
the capital, Havana, are at the center of a social transformation that may turn
out to be as important as anything else that has been achieved during Castro's
47 years in power. Spurred into action by the collapse of the Soviet Union and the disastrous
effect this had on its subsidized economy, the government of Cuba was forced
to take radical steps to feed its people. The solution it chose -- essentially
unprecedented both within the developed and undeveloped world -- was to establish
a self-sustaining system of agriculture that by necessity was essentially organic. Laura Enriquez, a sociologist at the University of California-Berkeley,
who has written extensively on the subject of Latin American agriculture, said:
"What happened in Cuba was remarkable. It was remarkable that they decided
to prioritize food production. Other countries in the region took the neo-liberal
option and exported 'what they were good at' and imported food. The Cubans went
for food security and part of that was prioritizing small farmers." Cuba is filled with more than 7,000 urban allotments, or organoponicos, which
fill perhaps as many as 81,000 acres. They have been established on tiny plots
of land in the center of tower-block estates or between the crumbling colonial
homes that fill Havana. One afternoon I visited a small garden of tomatoes and
spinach that had been dug just a few hundred yards from the Plaza de la Revolution,
a vast concrete square where Castro and his senior regime members annually oversee
Cuba's May Day parade. More than 200 gardens in Havana supply its citizens with
more than 90 percent of their fruit and vegetables. Of all these gardens, the Vivero Organoponico Alamar is considered one of the
most successful. Established less than 10 years ago, the 0.7-hectare plot employs
about 25 people and provides a range of healthy, low-cost food to the local
community. Salcines led a brief tour of his garden, stopping off to point out things of
which he was particularly proud. There was the shed of tomatoes that had produced
five tons of fruit in six months, a self-designed metal pyramid structure that
he claimed focused natural energy and benefited not just the plants but the
gardeners as well, a worm farm wriggling with California Red worms and the bright
marigolds planted at the end of each row of vegetables to attract bees and butterflies. He was also very proud of his crop of splendid, shiny mint. "The Hotel
Nacional (Havana's state-run landmark hotel once frequented by the likes of
Al Capone) uses our mint for its mojitos (a mint-based cocktail)," he said.
"It's because it's organic." The economics of various organoponicos differ. At the Metropolitana Organoponico
in the city center, two of the four workers who tend the plot said the land
was owned by the government and that everything grown there was split 50-50.
"It's very good. It means that food does not have to be brought into the
city," said one of the men. At Alamar, Salcines said that once the workers had grown their set quota of
food and given that to the government, the surplus was theirs to sell with the
profits then divided among them. Such a sense of cooperation -- along with the
free meals for the workers -- added to the heady sense of idealism at Alamar,
the sort of socialist idealism that has earned Cuba many international supporters
over the years, despite Castro's dictatorial rule and his repression of political
dissent. Such farms barely existed in the late 1980s. Back then, Cuba's economy was
extraordinarily reliant on subsidies from its political older brother, the Soviet
Union. Its agriculture was designed with one aim in mind -- namely to produce
as much sugar cane as possible, which the Soviets bought at more than five times
the market price, in addition to purchasing 95 percent of its citrus crop and
73 percent of its nickel. In exchange, the Soviets provided Cuba with 63 percent
of its food imports and 90 percent of its petrol. Such a relationship made Cuba
extraordinarily vulnerable. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, such subsidies halted almost overnight.
Suddenly, the future looked bleak. Nowhere was the effect felt more strongly than in the stomachs of the ordinary
people. Figures produced by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization suggest
that the daily calorie intake of the average Cuban fell from about 2,600 calories
a day in the late 1980s to between 1,000 and 1,500 by 1993. Essentially, people
had to get by on about half the food they had been eating. With no subsidies and limited resources, the Cuban regime took the decision
to look inward. Ceasing to organize its economy around the export of tropical
products and the import of food, it decided to maximize food production. By
necessity, this meant a back-to-basics approach; with no Soviet oil for tractors
or fertilizer it turned to oxen, with no Soviet oil for its fertilizer and pesticide,
it turned to natural compost and the production of natural pesticides and beneficial
insects. It is estimated that more than 200 locally based centers specializing in biopesticides
annually produce 200 tons of verticillium to control whitefly, and 800 tons
of beaveria sprays to control beetles. Professor Jules Pretty, of the University of Essex's department of biological
sciences, recently wrote: "Cut banana stems baited with honey to attract
ants are placed in sweet potato fields and have led to control of sweet potato
weevil. There are 170 vermicompost centers, the annual production of which has
grown from three to 9,300 tons. Crop rotations, green maturing, intercropping
and soil conservation have all been incorporated into polyculture farming." Remarkably, this organic revolution has worked. Annual calorie intake now stands
at about 2,600 a day, while UNFAO estimates that the percentage of the population
considered undernourished fell from 8 percent in 1990-92 to about 3 percent
in 2000-02. Cuba's infant mortality rate is lower than that of the U.S., while
at 77 years, life expectancy is the same. Everyone appears to agree that this new, organic approach is far more efficient
than the previous Soviet model that emphasized production at all costs. Fernando
Funes, head of the national Pasture and Forage Research Unit, told Harper's
magazine: "In that old system it took 10 or 15 units of energy to produce
one unit of food energy. At first we did not care about economics, (but) we
were realizing just how inefficient it was." A second step Cuba took in the mid-1990s to try to save its economy was the
establishment of mass tourism. Yet while this has provided the government with
a ready source of millions of dollars in hard currency, it also has helped produce
a dual-track society with its own tensions and clear divide between those who
have access to foreign currency -- or the Cuban Convertible Peso -- and those
who make do with the lowly Cuban peso, which cannot be used to buy many goods. By contrast, Salcines believes the introduction of organoponicos -- a loosening
of government control that also saw small restaurants and some private businesses
established -- has been a success. He also believes these allotments have stayed
true to Cuba's revolutionary ideas. "Not everything is perfect," Salcines said. "But if you look
at what capitalism has done for other countries in the region, I believe that
the situation for poor people is better in Cuba. Our society is more equal." Experts, such as Professor Pretty, believe Cuba may be one of the only countries
in the world to have adopted wholesale a self-sustaining system of agriculture.
"They had no choice," he said. "Their only choice was to look
inwards, to the resources they had and say: 'Can we make more of these resources?'
" Champions of organic, non-intensive agriculture might cite Cuba as an example
that other countries could adopt rather than following the large-scale, industrial
agriculture system. But could Cuba's labor-intensive example be repeated without the availability
of large numbers of enforced workers? "I don't know. I think it is true that it has required much labor,"
Pretty said. "The thing is that it has also produced a lot of food. ...
People are also closer to their food production. (In the West) we are worried
that we don't know about where our food comes from. In Havana, people are closer
to their food production and that may also have psychological benefits."
The same day as visiting the allotment at Alamar, I took a visit to the other
side of Cuba's dual-track economy. The Hotel Nacional has hosted the likes of
Winston Churchill and Fred Astaire, and more recently Naomi Campbell and Leonardo
DiCaprio. On a lawn overlooking the ocean, I paid the equivalent of an ordinary Cuban's
weekly wage for a mojito. It tasted great, but it didn't taste of the revolution. Andrew Buncombe writes for The Independent in Britain.
__________________________ GREEN REVOLUTIONS IN CUBA AND VENEZUELA Malcom Lagauche
When most people hear the word "revolution" about either Cuba or
Venezuela, images of the Cuban revolution of the 1950s with Fidel Castro at
the forefront, or of Hugo Chavez giving a scathing speech attacking U.S. imperialism
are brought to mind. However, both countries are today experiencing a revolution
in the way their people eat. After the Soviet Union dropped Cuba like a hot potato, the island country found
itself without finances. At that time, Cuba imported much of its food, so it
had to change its methods to feed its citizens. The Independent daily newspaper
of Great Britain ran a story on August 8, 2006, titled, "The Good Life
in Havana: Cuba’s Green Revolution." According to the article: Twenty years ago, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Fidel Castro’s
small island faced a food crisis. Today, its networks of small urban farmers
is thriving, an organic success story that is feeding the nation … … Mr. Salcines and his small urban farm at Alamar, an eastern suburb
of the capital, Havana, are at the center of a social transformation that
may turn out to be as important as anything else that has been achieved during
Castro’s 47 years in power. Spurred into action by the collapse of the Soviet Union and the disastrous
impact on its subsidized economy, the government of Cuba was forced to take
radical steps to feed its people. The solution it chose — essentially
unprecedented both within the developed and underdeveloped world — was
to establish a self-sustaining system of agriculture that by necessity was
essentially organic. Laura Enriquez, a sociologist at the University of California, Berkeley,
who has written extensively on the subject of Latin American agriculture,
said, "What happened in Cuba was remarkable. It was remarkable that they
decided to prioritize food production. Other countries in the region took
the neo-liberal option and exported ‘what they were good at’ and
imported food. The Cubans went for food security and part of that was prioritizing
small farmers." Today, there are more than 7,000 plots occupying more than 81,000 acres on
which organic food is farmed in Cuba. Many of these are located in urban areas
as well as rural venues. In Havana, there are more than 200 gardens, some in
small spaces between tower block estates, that supply the city’s population
with more than 90% of their fruit and vegetables. The farmers are obligated
to farm a certain amount of products for the Cuban government. The surplus then
belongs to the farmers who sell it for profit, which is divided among them. This method of producing food has supplied work for thousands of Cubans. Their
employment is not dependent upon the whims of international finance. Currently, the Cuban system of organic farming and distribution, is being implemented
in Caracas, Venezuela. April M. Howard wrote an article called "Feeding Ourselves: Organic Urban
Gardens in Caracas, Venezuela" that appeared on www.venezuelanalysis.com
on August 10, 2006. According to Howard: In the middle of the modern, concrete city of Caracas, Venezuela, Norali
Venezuela is standing in a garden dressed in jeans and work boots. She is
the director of the Organoponico Boliver, the first urban organic garden to
show its green face in the heart of the city of Caracas … … To Venezuelans, the garden represents a shift in the ways that Venezuelans
get their food. "People are waking up," she (Venezuela) told the
press. We’ve been dependent on McDonald’s and Wendy’s for
so long. Now people are learning to eat what we can produce ourselves"
… … The Oganoponicos are inspired by similar projects that sprung up
in Cuba after the fall of the Soviet bloc, this means that Venezuelans would
buy and consume food grown in Venezuela, as opposed to the current situation
in which, according to the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization
(FAO), Venezuela imports about 80 percent of the food that it consumes. Currently, Cuba is entirely independent from the outside world for its food
needs. Venezuela is moving toward a similar autonomy. There could be a monkey wrench in the future for Cuba’s astute program,
however. Lately, with Fidel Castro recuperating from an operation, much speculation
has been spoken about Cuba’s future. The U.S. government (Republicans
and Democrats alike) are speaking about bringing "freedom" to the
Cuban people. If such an unfortunate occurrence comes forth, we have Iraq to look at as an
example of some of the "freedoms" brought about by U.S. interference.
In Iraq, Paul Bremer, the U.S. viceroy who set up the regulations for a "free"
Iraq, posted 100 edicts before he left his post: edicts that can not be broken
by successive Iraqi governments. Edict #81 forbids Iraqi farmers from using
seeds of their previous crops, a farming method had been in existence for 5,000
years in Iraq. Iraqi farmers now must purchase genetically-modified seeds from
Monsanto for their crops. This is a rule that is tightly regulated. Inspectors
frequently visit farmers in Iraq to ensure acquiescence. If a farmer uses his
own seeds, he is heavily fined. How can this happen? It’s quite simple. Monsanto takes a seed of a crop,
copies it and manufactures the seeds. Once the seed is copied, Monsanto then
acquires a patent for the seed design. In other words, any natural seeds with
the same patented design become illegal to use. If Cuba is "freed" by the U.S., there will be an immediate end to
Cuban farmers using their own seeds. Then, Cubans will no longer be able to
purchase readily-available organic foods at a low price. In reading about the Cuban and Venezuelan programs, the merit of self-sufficiency
and economics play a major factor. However, one point is missing from most of
the reports: the health component. If more than 90% of Cubans, and a growing number of Venezuelans, eat a diet
consisting of organic foods, they will become much healthier than the people
of industrialized societies whose diets consist mostly of processed, artificial,
sugar-laden foods that are slowly poisoning them to death. Obesity and diabetes are at all-time highs in the U.S. More than 50% of the
population are considered overweight. Currently, there are 21 million U.S. citizens
who suffer from diabetes. Health experts predict that within 10 years, that
figure will be a staggering 45 million. This is an easy prediction because experts
follow the degradation of the U.S. diet and can accurately predict the results
for a 10-year period. Before I wrote this article, I performed a little research on diabetes in the
U.S. and Cuba. In Cuba, there are about 300,000 people with diabetes. The country
has an active educational program on diabetes that begins with school kids.
The Cuban rate of diabetes is about 1/7 of that in the U.S. Of the top at-risk
populations for diabetes in the U.S., Cuban-Americans come in at third place,
a very high-risk figure. One does not have to be Einstein to figure out why Cuban-Americans are at such
a high risk for diabetes. Their gene pools are similar to those on the island
90 miles off the coast of Florida, so it is not genetic. They are at risk because
they have succumbed to the U.S. diet of fast food and junk food. Possibly, opponents of U.S. imperialism and hegemony should consider patience
as a countering force for standing up to Uncle Sam. Within a couple of decades,
the U.S. citizenry just may eat itself to death. |