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.

He mentioned a group of actions developed in 2011 to strengthen urban and suburban agriculture, including the incorporation of idle land in usufruct, by Decree-Law 259.

He also talked about the consolidation of animal-drawn vehicles with the use of more oxen and the goal that each municipality will meet with the requirements in accordance with the conditions of the soil and climate of each locality.

He noted that both types of agriculture have a profound agroecological base, and urged the greater use of local materials and wastes to increase the production of organic fertilizers.

He also talked about the importance of developing the production of seeds in each territory to avoid dependence on imports.

Campanioni also urged to continue the recovery of beds and irrigation systems of organic garden units, and to maintain a diversified food supply with a proper marketing system.

Link here.

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?

Cuba is often cited as being a world leader in sustainable food production, a model for the rest of the world to follow. And, as I discovered in my visits to five different cities and eight different small scale agricultural operations, there are some really good things happening in and around the cities in Cuba in terms of small scale urban agriculture. For example, the number of small scale organic market gardening operations that can be found in and around Cuban cities has established itself as a major food contributor in the last twenty years. Most noticeably this has happened in the last decade, so that according to Wikipedia, today over 7,000 of these community based and serving market gardens can be found throughout the country, with more than 35,000 hectares of land in and around Havana producing 90% of the fruit and vegetables this city of 2.4 million consumes.

It would appear also that Cuba has been subject to some of the same trends that are shaping the rest of the world. Despite efforts by the government to discourage rural-urban migration, Cuba, and particularly Havana, have been subject to a major rural urban shift, particularly in the last 20 years. In fact, according to Lisa Wolfe of the Food First Institute, in 1989 some 28 percent of Cuba’s population lived in urban areas but by 2005 this figure had shifted to 74%! No wonder large parts of the countryside looked barren—most of the producers had left for the cities! At the same time, however, many people, perhaps some of the same people who left the countryside, are starting or working on the cooperative or privately operated market gardens that ring the cities. In fact, today Cuba has more than 7,000 of these enterprises, and, with the agreement from and support of the state, more are being started every year.

As beneficiaries of a long heritage of cheap globalized food sources, it may be hard for us to think that this should be of direct or immediate concern to us. And yet the news media occasionally raises us from our slumber with headlines such as the recent headline in the business section of the Times Colonist reading Global Food Prices Hit Record High. Is this something that we should be concerned about? What I discovered after checking on what I believe to be authoritative information from sources such as the World Bank, Lester Brown of the World Watch Institute and writer Gwyn Dyer might best be summarized in the following manner.

This is a large organoponico that is located in the suburbs of Sancti Spiritus, also near the centre of Cuba. In the forground is a garden that was started by a class of Univ. of Alberta students under the guidance of Ron Berezan and in the background is the garden itself. As part of their agreement with the state, they provide food for a nearby hospital and a lunch program at a nearby school. The state provides the land as well as the cement and other materials for the raised beds. This was the case with all the organoponicos I saw. Photo by David Stott.

There appears to be a broad concensus that a major global food shortage including increasing numbers of famines is coming. Why? It would appear that we are creating a “perfect storm” in global food supply. The exploding world population, together with overfarming, overfishing and environmental degradation, to name just four of several major factors, are all starting to catch up with us. How has this affected world food prices thus far?

It is perhaps not surprising that a report by the World Bank in 2008 reported an 83% increase in global food prices between 2005-2008 when oil prices were peaking, heading towards $147 per barrel..Historically, because of conventional agriculture’s huge dependence on oil for all aspects of its production, food prices have always paralleled oil prices in increases. Now, once again, after some drop in food prices during the recession, food prices increased over 30% this last year, only 3% below their peak in 2008.

As food prices continue to rise, will we start to see more food riots erupt all over the world as starving populations demand answers from their governments? According to CNN’s website, “Social media may have fanned the flames of revolt which toppled governments in Tunisia and Egypt and triggered demonstrations across the Middle East. But the tinderbox was built on high unemployment, corruption and rising food prices. It’s a telling sign that the trouble in Tunisia started with the self immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi, a street vendor protesting the police seizure of his produce cart.”

And, what will happen if weather patterns get even worse or if we have a string of really bad natural disasters?

Due to escalating resource scarcities from oil and gas to fish and forests together with climatic changes and economic vulnerabilities, we are faced with the virtual certainty of an increasingly volatile future, perhaps starting with food supplies. Even in our situation, where our wealth and high valued currency cushion us from the full impact of global food scarcities and rising prices, more people are starting to have to change their food buying and eating habits. Of course those most severely affected are lower income households, who have fewer if any alternatives and whose health is being affected.

I also think most of us sense that, in a number of very important ways, our planetary culture is skating on increasingly thin ice, not just in terms of food production, but in many other respects, environmentally, economically and in terms of our social safety nets. For the most part, however, most of us have been too busy with the demands of our work, social or personal lives to be concerned or to seriously consider and act on these concerns. But food is perhaps our most basic of needs, and something we can all do something about.

Here as elsewhere, as food becomes more expensive and in shorter supply, will we, children of the cities, start to relearn and repractice the smaller scale food growing skills that were an important part of the lives of our forefathers and mothers? We here on the Island have begun to take notice, with farmers markets selling local food springing up in almost every municipality, as well as groups such as the Slow Food Movement, the Island Chefs Collaborative, Gorge Tillicum Urban Farmers and the Land Conservancy supporting local growers and gardeners and training programs such as Halliburton Farm, Glendale Gardens and LifeCycles offering training to interested individuals. Then there is the community garden movement, which I am personally involved with, which is creating new community gardens.

Nevertheless, while these may be leading indicators for a growing movement and there is certainly public interest and support for such initiatives, without the active support of all levels of government, as well as local groups and organizations in a position to offer land or other forms of support, they are still responding to a tiny fraction of what needs to be done to simply grow more food for ourselves and to seriously impact on our huge vulnerability to global food challenges and scarcities. Rules need to be altered in support of local food production, funds need to be made available to support new farmers coming into farming. And something that individuals, governments at all levels and of all stripes, church and non-profit groups of all sorts could do now as a first step towards greater self sufficiency is to undertake assessments or inventories of their available land and resources. As Gandhi put it so well, “If the people lead, the leaders will follow.” Let us hope so.

As Cuba is showing, using intensive organic growing methods, our backyards as well as municipal lands together with private and organizationally owned lands that can produce huge amounts of food for our populations. If a country with a fraction of the resources available to it can do so, why can’t we? In fact, if we either have the foresight, or necessity drives us to do so, I foresee a time in the not too distant future, when we can begin to repopulate our rural areas as productive green spaces rather than rural estates, suburbs or hayfields. We could in fact, witness a form of rural renaissance in our lifetime as we begin to repopulate the areas surrounding our cities with new communities of small scale farmers taken from our cities. We can do so out of choice or we can do so out of necessity. I think that choosing to become more self sufficient is preferable to waiting until we have no choice and fewer options available to us.

To end where we began: Towards the end of my visit to Cuba, I spoke with a Cuban woman at one of the bed and breakfasts we were staying at. She mentioned that she had a 14 year old daughter. I asked her what she thought her daughter might do when she had finished school. Silence, then, “We don’t know what she should be preparing for.” Hesitation, then “But we do know that there will be work in agriculture.” Perhaps there is a lesson here for us, our children or our grandchildren.

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.

FAO’s official was optimistic about the future of Cuban agriculture despite obstacles posed by the economic, financial and commercial blockade imposed by the U.S the island has to overcome.

The Program’s executive secretary Nelson Campanioni told the press the two modalities of the initiative make it possible to produce food making the most of the potential of each area.

The implementation of the program shows the local development since it has come as a solution to specific problems in each territory, based on the producers’ creative initiative, the characteristics of the soils and materials needed.

“This is the agriculture of the future in the whole world, because it allows taking advantage of every piece of land available by applying sustainable methods such as agro ecology and worm humus as fertilizer, among other techniques” Campanioni noted.

The program focuses mainly in the production of different types of vegetables, grains, fruits, dairy cattle and small livestock.

Data from the 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.

Link.

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.

The research found that urban gardens can promote community, by providing people with opportunities to form connections and friendships with others. Gardens have the capability to promote cohesion in diverse communities and be inclusive toward marginalised individuals. The urban gardens visited were found to provide opportunities for engagement in democratic processes, providing fulfilment to individuals in a way that other areas of their lives were neglecting to provide. It was found that the motivators or reasons why people are driven to engage in urban gardens are varied. This research provided a clearer understanding of the broad personal and social ills that urban gardening can preempt. Additionally this research found that forming strong partnerships and investing in developing the leadership skills of community garden members is paramount to the success of urban gardens.

To create sustainable urban gardening programs this research recommends several overarching and site specific recommendations. Including the importance of forming partnerships with government and non- government agencies, developing and supporting cross sector collaborations that ensure that a decentralised planning process drives gardening programs. The research also recommends the importance of community capacity building, ensuring the that the garden is accessible and provides opportunities to form strong connections and that it is inclusive to a diverse range of people. Finally this research recommends that a sense of genuine empowerment and solidarity are fostered, highlighting that strong leadership is essential for ensuring sustainable urban garden programs.
This research contributes to the discourse of community garden research and develops a deeper understanding of key themes that can define whether a garden is successful, engaging, inclusive and sustainable. This research looks closely at the reasons gardens are successful, while analysing the pitfalls and problems as disclosed by the community gardener interviewees.
By providing case studies and interviews this research provides a clear framework that is useful in the planning and development of urban gardens.

Read the complete paper here.

See ‘Brisbane to Bogata’ website.

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

Institute of Tropical Agriculture
Two nights in a rural province
Neighborhood organization and Community projects
Private farms and farm cooperatives
State run farm
Dairy farm
Vermiculture project
Pastures and Forages Station
Cubasolar, NGO promoting renewable energy and energy efficiency

Cost: $2550

See more here.

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.

It was good to see Cuba again as the first time was rather surperficial and overwhelming at the same time. But after my second trip, I realize that there are some models that they have created which can be (and are being) reproduced and adapted all over the world. It’s an agricultural structure that has been devised in Cuba to produce as much as 90% of the fresh food that that 11.2 Cuban citizens consume.

This stands in stark contrast to the North American food landscape where we rely on a remarkably fragile, ridiculously complex global food swap just to meet our basic food needs. Where I live in Edmonton, Alberta, we produce less 10% of the food locally that we consume, despite being an “agricultural power” on the Canadian prairies. (Hint, the American food system isn’t the only food system that is broken!)

See Food Girl’s blog here.

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.

They paid one peso per square meter to the government as rent each month (a total of 1390 pesos) and after paying that plus other expenses (water, electricity, manure, seeds), the 10 workers divided all of the profits among themselves as their salaries. They told us they were required to produce 20 kg of food per square meter each year, which equates to 1.5 to 2 kg per square meter each month. I do not know if this was a production quota set by the government or merely the amount required for them to pay their own bills and salaries.

While the Communist model cannot be recreated in the U.S. (nor should it be now that I’ve had ample time to reflect on the pros and cons of the Cuban system of government), the urban agricultural model can and should be copied. This particular organipónico was 0.5 hectares and it was one of 38 organipónicos in the city. It was one of the first organipónicos and it was founded in 1992 in the height of the Special Period. They grew 18 crops and they also produced their own compost and worm castings. We caught them in transition between the winter and summer seasons, and we saw them growing carrots, chard, beets, lettuce, onions, peppers, bananas, chives, basil, sorghum, marigolds, beans, cucumbers, tomatoes, and spinach. To run the organipónico, they had 10 workers: seven to do the farm work, one to manage the operation, one to do the accounting, and one to sell the produce. They also received occasional training from local agroecology experts in various subjects, a concept that seems similar to the U.S. extension system except that it focused entirely on agroecology and I believe it’s much more robust than the U.S. extension system.

Strangely enough, they introduced us to basil and chives as “medicinal plants.” Basil is good for the stomach they told us, and in addition to its medicinal properties, chives are great for pest control. They make a spray by mixing chives and water to spray on the plants to control pests. Another pest control method involved soda bottles laid on their sides with their top halves cut open. Inside the bottle, they mixed molasses and water to attract and then drown bugs. This was just a small example of the incredible inventiveness we witnessed over and over again on the farms we visited.

See the rest of the Diary here.

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.

The fundamental differences between the Cuban and American systems as they relate to the success of urban agriculture are vast and, for the most part, are insurmountable.

Land ownership key

Case in point, the success of urban agriculture in Cuba has been grounded in the distribution of public land for food production. For example, a law passed in 2008 allowed any citizen or entity to request idle lands up to 33 acres to be passed out in usufruct for 20-40 years. This law resulted in 16,000 persons requesting land in the past two years. Since all land in Cuba – with the exception of private homes – is the property of the State, the government has resources at its disposal to support its policies far beyond that of any American jurisdiction.

See the rest of the article here.

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.”

This short video produced by the nonprofit group Kitchen Gardeners International (KGI) peeks into Havana’s urban farms and gardens to see what lessons they have to offer other cities working to move toward sustainable food security.

See Havana Homegrown at Kitchen Gardeners here.

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.

Cuba’s model of environmentally friendly and sustainable urban agriculture has been an inspiration for numerous city projects around the world.

When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, Cuba’s supplies of cheap oil suddenly dried up, plunging the country into a severe recession referred to as “the Special Period.”

Farming in Cuba until then had relied heavily on oil to drive tractors and other heavy machinery, so there was a fundamental reorganization of food production, leading to a boom in urban organic agriculture.

And while North America may not have the food and water shortage problems of some African nations, urban farms are still expanding in major cities such as Vancouver on the west coast of Canada.

Michael Levenston, the executive director of City Farmer, part of Canada’s Office of Urban Agriculture, told CNN that there were a number of models being deployed.

“There are people growing stuff in their back gardens and then there are bigger models like the University of British Columbia, which has a market-sized farm in the center of the city selling produce every Saturday at a farmer’s market … that is a very strong and vibrant entity,” he said.

The United States has sizeable urban agriculture projects in Atlanta, Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, New York and Pittsburgh. One U.S. collective of urban farmers says it is has 800 city-based plots that last year produced 150 tonnes of food.

See the rest of the article here.

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.

Havana has almost 10,000 gardens, ranging from back yards to truck farms like Alamar. The 44th Street organoponico (the official term for the organic gardens in raised beds), founded in 1992, takes up half a city block on what used to be a dumping place. Its 48 raised concrete beds are filled with a planting mixture made of soil brought in from farther out in the country, mixed with worm compost from a bigger garden near them. They start the plants in three shade houses, harvest a bed all at once and set out new plants the same day.

They grow sorghum around the edges of the whole garden as a trap plant; the bugs like sorghum and munch on it instead of the leaf vegetables. Garden director Roberto Perez Sanchez says that the sorghum “keeps the insects entertained.” Basil and marigold bloom at the foot of every bed to ward off more insects; and onions or garlic planted close together as a border inside each bed is a third line of defense.

This planting method gets results: They harvest half a dozen crops a year on average. Some plants like spinach go from garden to table in as little as 15 days. And the leaf crops are organically grown – beautiful, succulent, unblemished.

They also raise medicinal herbs – aloe vera, chamomile, lime, marjoram, two kinds of mint, and chicory. A sign at the counter from the macrobiotic researchers at Havana’s world-famous Finlay Institute explains the health benefits of chicory: “a friend of the liver.”

The garden co-operative has eight members: three in production, three in sales, a biological specialist that makes trichoderma (a biological control for nematodes) and director Perez, who is the agronomist and administrator. They contract part of the crop to the government to redistribute to schools, hospitals and workplaces to supplement what these institutions grow on site. They sell the rest directly: 80 percent of the profit goes to the workers, 15 percent to the state and 5 percent is saved as a capital reserve.

See the rest of the article and more photos here.

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.

Garden number 49. Italy – Elio’s vineyard, Tivoli. A private fruit and vegetable garden.

Garden number 51. Morocco – The Aguedal, Marrakech. Royal vegetable gardens dating to the 12th century, irrigated with water from the Ourika valley, with water stored in large central cisterns.

Garden number 58. South Africa – The Company Garden, Cape Town. Originally created to provide fresh food to passing ships, using water from natural springs; now a city park.

Garden number 77. Singapore – Wilson Wong’s Community Garden. An urban vegetable garden created as a community project.

List of all 80 gardens from the show here.

A DVD of the series and a book are available at the TV Show website here.

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.

The island’s authorities hope suburban farming will make food cheaper and more abundant, cut transportation costs and encourage urban dwellers to leave bureaucratic jobs for more productive labour.

But the government will continue to hold a monopoly on most aspects of food production and distribution, including its control of most of the land in the communist-run nation.

The pilot programme for the project is being conducted in the central city of Camaguey, which the Cuban agriculture ministry has said eventually will have 1,400 small farms covering 52,000 hectares (128,490 acres), just minutes outside the town.

The farms, mostly in private hands but also including some cooperatives and state-owned enterprises, must grow everything organically, and the ministry expects they will produce 75% of the food for the city of 320,000 people, with big state-owned farms providing the rest.

On a recent day, dozens of people were hard at work plowing fields, hoeing earth, posting protective covering for crops and putting up fencing as the sun came up.

“This land they gave to us, the private farmers. I have four hectares (10 acres) and now they have leased me eight (20 acres) more,” one of the farmers, Camilo Mendoza, told Reuters.

“Look, on this side and the other side are other plots, and over there another. Here they have given quite a bit of land and support to private farmers,” he said.

The project is modelled after the hundreds of urban gardens developed by then-defence minister Raul Castro during the deep economic depression of the 1990s that followed the collapse of communism in eastern Europe.

See the rest of the article here.

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:

• Orientations in Canada and Cuba

• Workshops and dialogue on a variety of urban agriculture and permaculture themes

• Placements in existing permaculture/urban agriculture projects

• The opportunity to work with local leaders in the design and implementation of a new project site

• Spanish language learning

• Immersion in the rich cultural life and natural beauty of the Sancti Spiritus region of Cuba

• Optional graduate level credit through the University of Alberta, Faculty of Extension

This project is a partnership of The Urban Farmer, The University of Alberta Faculty of Extension, and the Antonio Nunez Jimenez Foundation for Nature and Man. Space is limited and will be granted on a first come, first served basis. Please see the attached brochure and registration form for complete details.

Attached brochure. 7MB PDF

For more information, please contact:

Ron Berezan, The Urban Farmer, theurbanfarmer@shaw.ca, 780 221-4800
Dr. Mary Beckie, University of Alberta, Faculty of Extension, marybeckie@ualberta.ca

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.

Sometimes smack bang between tower block estates or next door to the crumbling colonial houses, fresh fruit and vegetables are growing in abundance.

Some of the plots are small – just a few rows of lettuces and radishes being grown in an old parking space.

Other plots are much larger – the size of several football pitches. Usually they have a stall next to them to sell the produce at relatively low prices to local people.

Twenty years ago, Cuban agriculture looked very different. Between 1960 and 1989, a national policy of intensive specialised agriculture radically transformed Cuban farming into high-input mono-culture in which tobacco, sugar, and other cash crops were grown on large state farms.

Cuba exchanged its abundant produce for cheap, imported subsidised oil from the old Eastern Bloc. In fact, oil was so cheap, Cuba pursued a highly industrialised fuel-thirsty form of agriculture – not so different from the kind of farming we see in much of the West today.

But after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the oil supply rapidly dried up, and, almost overnight, Cuba faced a major food crisis. Already affected by a US trade embargo, Cuba by necessity had to go back to basics to survive – rediscovering low-input self-reliant farming.

City allotments

Oxen replaced tractors when Cuba became a low-fuel economy
With no petrol for tractors, oxen had to plough the land. With no oil-based fertilizers or pesticides, farmers had to turn to natural and organic replacements.

Today, about 300,000 oxen work on farms across the country and there are now more than 200 biological control centres which produce a whole host of biological agents in fungi, bacteria and beneficial insects.

Havana has almost 200 urban allotments – known as organiponicos – providing four million tons of vegetables every year – helping the country to become 90% self-sufficient in fruit and vegetables.

Alamo Organiponico is one of the larger co-operatives employing 170 people, which was built on a former rubbish-tip that produces 240 tons of vegetables a year.

There are a wide range of crops planted side by side and brightly coloured marigolds at the edges.

“We produce all different kinds of vegetables,” says farmer Emilio Andres who is proud of the fact that his allotment feeds the local community.

“We sell to the people, the school, the hospital, also to the restaurant and the hotel too.

“It’s important because it’s grown in the city, it’s fresh food for the people, it’s healthy food, and it provides jobs for the people here too.

“We don’t spray any chemicals. We only spray biological means like bastilos – a bacteria and fungus to kill the pests. And we use repellent plants like marigolds to keep away the pests.

“When I see all of these healthy crops, without too many pests, grown without any chemicals, it’s amazing for me – I am making a contribution for the people that get healthy crops, healthy products.”

See the complete BBC article here.

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”

Guests:

Dr Julia Wright, head of programmes at Garden Organic and author of Sustainable Agriculture and Food Security in an Era of Oil Scarcity: Lessons from Cuba

Ben Reynolds, coordinator of Capital Growth , a scheme launched last November by London mayor Boris Johnson and the woman he appointed to be the chair of London Food, Rosie Boycott.

What is the potential for growing our own food? Sheila Dillon looks at the Mayor of London’s new project to make more land available for food production. She also looks at the experience of Cuba where political and economic change forced the population to attempt an “organic revolution” as the country struggled to produce enough food to survive. One response was to grow more food in urban areas.

This experience has struck a chord with UK groups interested in “peak oil” food production, and the film The Power of Community: How Cuba survived Peak Oil has toured the UK to enthusiastic audiences.

So what can we learn from Cuba and how productive could urban farming be in the UK?

Link to BBC recording here.

Power of Community (film) – How Cuba Survived Peak Oil

When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1990, Cuba’s economy went into a tailspin. With imports of oil cut by more than half – and food by 80 percent – people were desperate. This film tells of the hardships and struggles as well as the community and creativity of the Cuban people during this difficult time. Cubans share how they transitioned from a highly mechanized, industrial agricultural system to one using organic methods of farming and local, urban gardens. It is an unusual look into the Cuban culture during this economic crisis, which they call “The Special Period.” The film opens with a short history of Peak Oil, a term for the time in our history when world oil production will reach its all-time peak and begin to decline forever. Cuba, the only country that has faced such a crisis – the massive reduction of fossil fuels – is an example of options and hope.

Link to Power of Community here.

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.

“Our capacity for response is immediate because this is a cooperative,” said Miguel Salcines, walking among rows of lettuce in the garden he heads in the Alamar suburb on the outskirts of Havana.

Salcines says he is hardly sleeping as his 160-member cooperative rushes to plant and harvest a variety of beets that takes just 25 days to grow, among other crops.

As he talks, dirt-stained men and women kneel along the furrows, planting and watering on land next to a complex of Soviet-style buildings. Machete-wielding men chop weeds and clear brush along the periphery of the field.

Around 15 percent of the world’s food is grown in urban areas, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, a figure experts expect to increase as food prices rise, urban populations grow and environmental concerns mount.

Since they sell directly to their communities, city farms don’t depend on transportation and are relatively immune to the volatility of fuel prices, advantages that are only now gaining traction as “eat local” movements in rich countries.

ROOFTOPS AND PARKING LOTS

In Cuba, urban gardens have bloomed in vacant lots, alongside parking lots, in the suburbs and even on city rooftops.

They sprang from a military plan for Cuba to be self-sufficient in case of war. They were broadened to the general public in response to a food crisis that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union, Cuba’s biggest benefactor at the time.

They have proven extremely popular, occupying 35,000 hectares (86,000 acres) of land across the Caribbean island. Even before the hurricanes, they produced half of the leaf vegetables eaten in Cuba, which imports about 60 percent of its food.

“I don’t say they have the capacity to produce enough food for the whole island, but for social and also agricultural reasons they are the most adequate response to a crisis,” said Catherine Murphy, a U.S. sociologist who has studied Cuba’s urban gardens.

GREEN PRODUCTIVITY

In Alamar, the members get a salary and share the garden’s profits, so the more they grow, the more they earn. They make an average of about 950 pesos, or $42.75, per month, more than double the national average, Salcines said.

The co-op, which began in 1997, now produces more than 240 tons of vegetables annually on its 11 hectares (27 acres) of land, which is about the size of 13 soccer fields.

The gardens sell their produce directly to the community and, out of necessity, grow their crops organically.

“Urban agriculture is going to play a key role in guaranteeing the feeding of the people much more quickly than the traditional farms,” said Richard Haep, Cuba coordinator for German aid group Welthungerhilfe, which has supported these kinds of projects since 1994.

When the Soviet Union fell apart, Cuba’s supply of oil slowed to a trickle, hurting big state agricultural operations. Chemical fertilizers were replaced with mountains of manure, and beneficial insects were used instead of pesticides.

Unlike in developed countries, where organic products are more expensive, in Cuba they are affordable.

“We have taken organic agriculture to a social level,” said Salcines.

Some experts fear that rising international food prices along with the destruction of the hurricanes will return Cuba to the path of agrochemicals. The government is planning to construct a fertilizer plant with its oil-rich ally Venezuela.

But Raul Castro, who replaced ailing brother Fidel Castro as president in February, has also borrowed ideas from the urban gardens as he implements reforms to cut the island’s $2.5 billion in annual food imports, much of it from the United States.

Castro has decentralized farm decision-making and raised the prices that the state pays for agricultural products, which has increased milk production, for example, by almost 20 percent.

And, in September, the government began renting out unused state-owned lands to farmers and cooperatives, measures that met with approval of international aid groups.

“Decentralization and economic incentives. If those elements are expanded to the rest of the agricultural sector, the response will be the same,” said Welthungerhilfe’s Haep.

(Reporting by Esteban Israel; Editing by Jeff Franks and Eddie Evans)

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”.

The destruction of roughly 30 percent of the communist island’s food after devastating hurricanes has put the spotlight back on a practice borne out of necessity during communist Cuba’s most desperate hour.

Nearly two months on from the last of Hurricane Ike’s downpours, basic staples like lettuce are still hard to come by, save for select spots like a decade-old nursery in the eastern Havana suburb of Alamar.

The urban farm at Alamar operates on short cycles, and utilizes an organoponic model that combines organic – defined here by a lack of fertilizer or other additives – and water-submersion hydroponics techniques. An artificial irrigation system provides the foundation of the system.

The harvest is distributed through an adjoining cooperative distribution network.

“As of now, we sold in the previous month’s time, a critical month, roughly 50 kgs of lettuce, more than two tons, and lettuce production has practically been stabilized, and chard production will be stabilized, there are tomato plants, plenty of radish has been sold, the sale of other aromatic plants has remained steady and is not even satisfying the demand because of the large effect [from the hurricanes], but the recovery began immediately,” Miguel Salcines, the administrator of the organoponic farm at Alamar, said.

The urban farms, which appear in as unlikely spots as parking lots and roof terraces as well as more ordinary venues like personal gardens, now provide for 50 percent of the vegetable produce consumed by the nearly 11 million Cubans.

“In the end, the policy of urban agriculture is bringing results. You can see that we have vegetables in this organoponic garden and in these selling units,” a shopper at Alamar, oncologist Jesus Perez Alvarez, said.

The success of the model, that has flourished at other Havana farms like that of Bahia, has drawn the official seal approval of the Cuban government, despite the implicit autonomy it entails.

Grocery shoppers at the Bahia urban farm credit the model with helping Cuba overcome the devastation caused by the hurricanes.

“The situation really is getting better, now for example there’s lettuce, chard, some vegetables here and in other places, but it’s undeniable that the country hasn’t yet recovered,” Cuban retiree, Silvia Valladares, said.

And unlike the state-run grocery markets, the urban farms aren’t as exposed to the highs and lows of the Cuban economy at large, directly moving their produce to their communities.

The model’s record of consistently offering a full range of food items is among its chief selling points.

“I don’t have time to go to the farmer’s market everyday, and there are times when a product comes in, and there are times when not, and there are plenty of shortages. And here, you can plant something, and at least that helps,” Cuban retiree Angel Romay Ortis said as he began work on his own urban farm.

Havana froze prices in September in the wake of the hurricanes, but urban producers still offer fruits and vegetables at lower prices than the state markets – also offering a wider range of produce.

What began with a cooperative of four farmers in 1997 has developed into a sector that counts 160 producers working on 11 hectares of land – the equivalent of 13 soccer fields – to produce 240 tons of produce each year. And the urban farmers’ output of 50 percent of the island’s produce is accomplished on just 20 percent of the island’s arable land.

As one way of increasing production, Cuba announced on Monday (October 27) it would allow most farms to purchase basic supplies at stores for the first time since the 1960s, when the US-embargo came into effect.

Since officially taking the helm of the Cuban state on February 24, 2008, Raul Castro has expressed his desire to apply such a productive model throughout the whole of Cuba’s socialist economy, emphasizing benefits of entrepreneurship.

For his work at Alamar, an urban farmer earns 950 Cuban pesos (USD 42.75) a month, nearly double the average Cuban’s salary.

Script for the Video Shot in Cuba

Link to video from Cuba in Spanish here.

1. VARIOUS OF SPRINKLERS AND ARTIFICIAL IRRIGATION SYSTEM AT EAST HAVANA ALAMAR ORGANOPONIC DISTRIBUTION FARM

2. MEN WORKING VEGETABLE FIELDS AND ORGANOPONIC GARDEN

3. FIELD SEEDED WITH VEGETABLES USING SHORT ORGANOPONIC CYCLES

4. (SOUNDBITE) (Spanish) ADMINISTRATOR OF EAST HAVANA ORGANOPONIC ALAMAR
FARM, MIGUEL SALCINES, SAYING:

“As of now, we sold in the pervious month’s time, a critical month, roughly 50 kgs of lettuce, more than two tons, and lettuce production has practically been stabilized, and chard production will be stabilized, there are tomato plants, plenty of radish has been sold, the sale of other aromatic plants has remained steady and is not even satisfying the demand because of the large effect [from the hurricanes], but the recovery began immediately.”

5. PEOPLE ARRIVE FOR SHOPPING AT ALAMAR ORGANOPONIC DISTRIBUTION COOPERATIVE

6. VARIOUS OF MEN TAKING LETTUCE HEADS FROM A WHEELBARROW FOR PURCHASE

7. (SOUNDBITE) (Spanish) CUBAN ONCOLOGIST, JESUS PEREZ ALVAREZ, SAYING:

“In the end, the policy of urban agriculture is bringing results. You can see that we have vegetables in this organoponic garden and in these selling units.”

8. WOMEN ARRIVING TO CHECKOUT LINE AT EAST HAVANA BAHIA ORGANOPONIC COOP

9. VARIOUS OF PEOPLE BUYING VEGETABLES AT CHECKOUT COUNTER OF EAST HAVANA BAHIA ORGANOPONIC DISTRIBUTION COOP

10. (SOUNDBITE) (Spanish) CUBAN RETIREE, SILVIA VALLADARES, SAYING:

“The situation really is getting better, now for example there’s lettuce, chard, some vegetables here and in other places, but it’s undeniable that the country hasn’t yet recovered.”

11. VARIOUS OF MAN PREPARING A PIECE OF HIS PROPERTY INTO URBAN FARM TO GROW VEGETABLES

12. (SOUNDBITE) (Spanish) CUBAN RETIREE, ANGEL ROMAY ORTIS, SAYING:

“I don’t have time to go to the farmer’s market everyday, and there are times when a product comes in, and there are times when not, and there are plenty of shortages. And here, you can plant something, and at least that helps.”

13. WOMEN WALKING TOWARDS STATE AGRO-MARKET AT VEGETABLES STAND THAT HAS EMPTY SHELVES

14. VEGETABLE STAND WITH TABLE READING:
“GARLIC, $2.50 EACH,”AND “YUCCA $1.50 EACH,” (“AJO, C/U $2.50″ AND “CHOPO, C/U $1.50″)

15. EMPTY SHELVES AT FARMER’S AGRO-MARKET VEGETABLE STANDS

16. VARIOUS OF MEN SEEDING VEGETABLES USING SHORT CYCLES AT EAST HAVANA ORGANOPONIC DISTRIBUTION COOPERATIVE

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.

“Neighbours are happy with cheap vegetables fresh from the field. Ms. Bouza never lacks for fresh produce, and she pulls in between $100 to $250 a month — many times the average government salary of $19.

Read complete article here.