With Food Prices Soaring, Cuba’s Urban Farms Could be a Model for the World

Niko Price, Associated Press
June 9, 2008
Photo by Javier Galeano/

“Ms. Bouza was a research biologist, living a solidly middle-class existence, when the collapse of the Soviet Union — and the halt of its subsidized food shipments to Cuba — effectively cut her government salary to $3 a month. Suddenly, a trip to the grocery store was out of reach.

“So she quit her job, and under a program championed by then-Defence Minister Raul Castro, asked the government for the right to farm an overgrown, half-acre lot near her Havana home. Now, her husband tends rows of tomatoes, sweet potatoes and spinach, while Ms. Bouza, 48, sells the produce at a stall on a busy street.

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Video: Lina speaks about her school’s food garden. She’s in Grade 5.

What a great thrill to revisit the school garden we (City Farmer) helped create back in 1986 in the West End of Vancouver. Twenty-two years later and the excitement is still present. Young children pick and wash lettuce, radishes and onions, cut them up carefully into small pieces before placing the vegetables in a large salad bowl. Their teacher mixes the spring harvest with dressing and serves the enthusiastic children who come back for seconds. When does that happen at home?

For a city farmer like me, this is “headline” news – kids growing and eating their food amongst the high-rises of inner city Vancouver where they live – parents watching, sometimes taking a nibble themselves, happy to see their children so focused.

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