Category — Cuba

Urban agriculture in Cuba produced 1,052,000 tons of vegetables in 2011

By PL
Cuba si.cu
08 January 2012

Urban agriculture in Cuba produced 1,052,000 tons of vegetables in 2011, 105 percent of the plan, which represented about two thousand tons more, an official source told the press.

The executive secretary of the National Group in charge of that movement, Campanioni Nelson, said that for this year they intend to reach one million 55 thousand tons, five thousand more than that scheduled in the preceding year.

At this moment, that area has a high productive potential, consisting of 1,275 hectares of organic gardens, 7, 396 hectares of vegetable gardens 241 hectares ofsemi-protected crops, said the manager.

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The first “organoponico” or urban market garden I saw was in Santa Clara, in the centre of Cuba. Three people work there and they sell all their produce from a stall in the front of the garden, which occupies a formerly vacant city lot. Photo by David Stott.

Watch Out Folks, Look What’s Coming Down the Street: Reflections on Cuba, the Global Food Situation and Victoria, BC

By David Stott
2011, Victoria, BC
David Stott is a community garden organizer and food security projects coordinator. Prior to working in this field he spent twenty years working in the international development and development education fields.

When most of us think of Cuba we tend to think of sun, sand, great music or Fidel Castro. However, when I spent a month in Cuba in January of this year, I had other ideas in mind. As a local organic farmer turned garden projects organizer for the last 20 years or so, I have a particular personal interest in Cuba and its role in sustainable agriculture, particularly in urban areas. What I learned there, and since I have returned, has caused me to open my eyes not only to food production in Cuba, but also to what is happening elsewhere on the planet and here at home. Where we are at now and where we could be going with global and local food production and availability, something that most Canadians have either taken for granted or left to “the experts”. After all, we’re an advanced country that will always be able to feed itself, right?

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Intensive agriculture between Ciego de Avila and Morón. Photo by Cohiba9.

Ministry of Agriculture indicates that more than 384,000 people are currently involved in any kind of urban or suburban agricultural activity in their municipalities.

ACN
web@radiorebelde.icrt.cu
2011.10.19

Havana, Cuba.- The representative in Havana of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, Marcio Porto, recently reaffirmed that the urban and suburban agriculture program put into practice by Cuba is an example to other nations.

During the closing of a national meeting about the sector, Porto said Cubans are respected because of their expertise and capacity of making a lot with little resources.

Porto said the initiative has succeeded in having large numbers of people involved due to the increased awareness of need to produce food in areas close to the towns and cities.

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Congress Garden in the Plaza De La Revolucion. Havana, Cuba. Photo by Christina Snowdon 2010.

Research report from ‘Brisbane to Bogata’ website

By Christina Snowdon
Murdoch University Institute for Sustainability and Technology Policy
2010

Abstract:

Urban Agriculture and City Farms and their Influence on Community Engagement is a study of the community aspects of urban gardening. The aim of this research was s to explore the roles that urban gardening play in community development and how urban agriculture can contribute to building community. This was achieved through site visits of community gardens and city farms in the United States and Australia, and site visits of urban agriculture farms in Cuba, during May to August 2010.

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Juan Reyes on his farm in Cotorro. Photo by Patricia Grogg/IPS.

Extended to 156 of the 169 municipalities of Cuba

HAVANA TIMES, Nov. 24, 2010 – The urban and suburban agriculture programmes will be extended to 156 of the 169 municipalities of Cuba before the close of the year, said Adolfo Rodriguez, head of the National Group in charge of that initiative, which until now has 36,000 farms throughout the island. The Caribbean country’s authorities are promoting the local production of food to reduce imports, estimated at more than two billion dollars, reported IPS.

Link.

Eco Cuba Exchange invites you to participate on a Global Exchange research delegation to study Sustainable Agriculture and Urban Gardens in Cuba.

Global Exchange organizes regular delegations of professors and practitioners of organic agriculture to Cuba, some of whom have subsequently developed ongoing exchange programs through their universities and communities. There is no lack of enthusiasm. It is only the U.S. embargo that interferes with the full development of these joint projects.

Program Highlights:

Scale Model of the city of Havana
Meet with Cuban Architect/City Planner
City Tour/urban gardens/farmer’s markets
Ministry of Agriculture

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Farmer-to-Farmer Movement, traditional knowledge sharing and the value of cooperation versus competition

By Jennifer Cockrall-King
Foodgirl.ca
May 18, 2010

Excerpt:

I’ve been to Cuba twice now, once in 2007 and just very recently (where I met and roomed with the amazing Jill Richardson, author of Recipe for America: Why Our Food System is Broken and What We Can Do to Fix It, and the blogger behind La Vida Locavore). Both times, I’ve been in Cuba to research their agricultural models, especially their urban agricultural models, as I’m writing a book on the global movement of urban agriculture.

Jill and I participated in a conference and research tour from May 5 to 15, 2010, organized by the Asociacion Cubana de Tecnicos Agricolas y Forestales. and Jill is doing a mind-blowing job of chronicling our day-to-day adventures on the farms and our other wanderings on La Vida Locavore, so check it out for blow-by-blow visits to the farms.

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From La Vida Locavore

by: Jill Richardson
La Vida Locavore
Sun May 16, 2010

Here’s the second installment on my trip to Cuba to study their urban & suburban agriculture and agroecology. I will be posting these daily for the next several days so please check in regularly to hear about the entire trip. In today’s installment, my group traveled to see a few farms & gardens in the western-most province of Cuba, Pinar del Rio.

Excerpt:

It’s difficult to separate the agricultural details of the Cuban system from the more organizational, Communist ones. Obviously nature works the same in both Cuba and the U.S. but Communism does not apply back home. This particular Organiponico provided vegetables to a maternity home and sold the rest to the community.

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Difference between the Cuban and American political and economic systems

By Andy Fisher
Civil Eats
April 21st, 2010
Andy Fisher is a Fellow with the Institute of Agriculture and Trade Policy’s Food and Society Fellows and Co-Founder/Executive Director for Community Food Security Coalition (CFSC).

Excerpt:

Yet, Cuban urban agriculture, no matter how inspiring, is largely irrelevant to Americans. The state is pervasive throughout Cuba and controls virtually all aspects of the official economy. The government can mobilize quickly and massively around its priorities through an array of powerful policy tools at its disposal. After 50 years of socialist rule, Cuban institutions, as well as the mentality and expectations of the Cuban public, differ vastly from those in the U.S. By way of example, the ruling motto of Cuban urban agriculture states, “We must decentralize only up to a point where control is not lost, and centralize only up to a point where initiative is not killed” embodies the vast differences between their planned economy and our free market system.

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A Visit to Cuba

By Roger Doiron
Kitchengardeners
April 13, 2010

Cuba is not only an island nation in terms of its geography, but also its economy and politics as a result of the US embargo and the fall of the Soviet Union, Cuba’s largest source of trade and aid until the Berlin Wall fell in 1991. Cut off from the world’s pipeline of food, oil, chemical pesticides and fertilizers, Cuba embarked upon an ambitious program to grow as much of its own organic food as possible in the 1990s during what was known as the “special period.”

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An urban community garden in central Vancouver, Canada. This project shows that food can be grown in densely populated areas. Photo by Michael Levenston

By Thair Shaikh
CNN
April 8, 2010

Excerpts:

London, England (CNN) — As the world’s urban population continues to grow at a rapid rate, communities around the world are increasingly turning to “city agriculture” to produce cheap, locally grown fruit and vegetables.

Among skyscrapers and housing estates, previously vacant lots are being used to produce millions of tons of organically grown food that experts say are “greener” and cheaper than commercially grown produce.

But while many countries are in the early stages of their urban agriculture development, China, Japan and Cuba have had successful city farms for decades.

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The 44th Street and Fifth Avenue Organoponico in Havana. They always grow lettuce, both acelga espanol and acelga bok choy, spinach, radishes, green onions, garlic chives (which they call ajo montana), arugula, chicory, green beans, carrots, watercress, apio (celery), parsley, broccoli and an Argentine green bean that looks like a snap pea on steroids. They also raise medicinals – aloe vera, manzanilla (camomile), tilo, mejorana, cana mexicana, yerba buena, and another kind of mint. A sign explains the health benefits of chicory. – Photo: Scott Braley

Havana Harvest

by Mickey Ellinger and Scott Braley
San Francisco Bay View
February 26, 2010

Excerpt:

“Del cantero a la mesa: from the garden bed to the table,” says the banner outside the urban garden at 44th Street and Fifth Avenue in Havana’s Playa district. People are lined up at the counter to buy today’s harvest: lettuce, spinach, bok choy, garlic chives.

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Garden number 5. Cuba – Alberto’s Huerto, Havana. An urban vegetable garden in the space left by a collapsed building.

Around the World in 80 Gardens – BBC

Around the World in 80 Gardens was a television series of 10 programmes in which British gardener and broadcaster Monty Don visited 80 of the world’s most celebrated gardens. The series was filmed over a period of 18 months and was first broadcast on BBC Two from 27 January to 30 March 2008. A book and DVD based on the series were also published.

These food gardens were featured the series:

Garden number 32. USA – Liz Christy Garden, Manhattan, New York. The first community garden in New York City, founded in 1973 by local resident Liz Christy on a vacant lot on the corner of Bowery and Houston Street.

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The suburban farm project dovetails with other steps introduced by Cuban president Raul Castro. Photograph: Ismael Francisco/AFP/Getty images

Project launched to ring urban areas with thousands of small farms in bid to reverse agricultural decline

By Marc Frank in Camaguey
The Guardian
7 February 2010

Cuba has launched an ambitious project to ring urban areas with thousands of small farms in a bid to reverse the country’s agricultural decline and ease its chronic economic woes.

The five-year plan calls for growing fruits and vegetables and raising livestock in four mile-wide rings around 150 of Cuba’s cities and towns, with the exception of the capital Havana.

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Permaculture Cuba! An Immersion Experience in Sustainable Urban Agriculture in the Heart of Cuba

For seven weeks in May and June of 2010, ten Canadians will have the opportunity to experience first hand the thriving urban agriculture and permaculture movements in Cuba. Based in the beautiful city of Sancti Spiritus, participants will work hand-in-hand with local leaders and practioners on a variety of fascinating projects producing food in the heart of the urban setting. Grounded in a model of partnership and collaborative learning, the program will include:

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Havana relies on 200 urban farms known as organoponicos

The vegetable gardeners of Havana

By Sarah Murch
BBC Two’s Future of Food
August 2009

Climate change, drought, population growth – they could all threaten future food supplies. But global agriculture, with its dependence on fuel and fertilisers is also highly vulnerable to an oil shortage, as Cuba found out 20 years ago.

Around Cuba’s capital Havana, it is quite remarkable how often you see a neatly tended plot of land right in the heart of the city.

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Photos by John M. Morgan and Faith Morgan 2004

Sunday 15 March 2009
Recordings: 26 minutes

Dusty Gedge, London TV (BBC).

Roberto Perez, Antonio Nunez Jimenez Foundation de la Naturaleza Y el Hombre in Cuba.

Vilda Figeroa, for 30 years a nutritionist at the Cuban Government Research Institute.

Justo Torres Lazo, urban farmer in Havana.

Madelaine Vasquez, food researcher, writer and presenter of the weekly TV programme “Con Sabor”

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Reuters Photo. A man works in an urban garden in Havana October 24, 2008.

By Esteban Israel
Dec 15, 2008

HAVANA (Reuters) – After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Cuba planted thousands of urban cooperative gardens to offset reduced rations of imported food.

Now, in the wake of three hurricanes that wiped out 30 percent of Cuba’s farm crops, the communist country is again turning to its urban gardens to keep its people properly fed.

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REUTERS – Oct 28, 2008
Reuters video in Spanish, linked. The video doesn’t seem to have been picked up by a news outlet and there is no news commentary in the footage. A raw script, which accompanies the video, and translation of the comments by the Cubans who were interviewed, is attached below this article.

Cubans hope urban gardens will solve food shortages caused by hurricane damage.

In the face of its greatest food shortage since the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, Cuba has fallen back on urban agriculture, which helped provide relief in the 1990′s during the Caribbean island’s “special period”.

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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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