An old article, but an interesting read nonetheless.

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CUBA'S ORGANIC REVOLUTION
Walter Schwarz
Resurgence, issue 212, May -- June 2002

Successful city farming.

ORGANIC AGRICULTURE is at a crossroads. Just as it breaks through into wider public awareness and achieves something more than grudging official recognition, it is in danger of being engulfed by a supermarket culture in which it becomes just another global commodity. Organic produce is no longer local and its producers can be squeezed until only the biggest survive. This is happening in Britain, the us and other industrial countries. Only in one country is organic food taken for granted by consumers and enthusiastically sponsored by the government.

In Cuba, a world-class model of organic practices has developed -- and most of the food is grown where it is eaten -- inside cities. This enterprise by the communist government was originally designed to fight economic isolation after the collapse of the Soviet Union, when Cuba could not import fertilizers, pesticides and fuel for tractors. But the organic mentality has taken hold and Cuba, despite its continuing poverty, is one of the healthiest countries to live in.

In the Cuban countryside organic sugar, coffee and orange groves are becoming established with official support -- but the spectacular success story is city farming, which produces a stunning 60% of Cuba's vegetables.
You see the veggie stalls on pavements, at street corners and under the covered walkways of Havana's elegant, crumbling colonial buildings. Inside the city, chemical fertilizers and most pesticides are forbidden.

Food grows in unlikely spaces between houses. Patios (or huertos) are the smallest unit. Over a million patios are registered in Cuba. Larger urban market gardens, growing vegetables on raised beds and selling them on site, are called organoponics -- a verbal adaptation of hydroponics which used to be in fashion here.

Ricardo Sanchez is passionate about organic gardening. He feeds his vegetables with compost from his kitchen, his catfish on worms and larvae, his rabbits on leaves and herbs. He makes natural pesticides to protect his produce. His tomatoes, guavas, avocados, mangoes, herbs and medicinal plants compete for space under the shadow of his beautiful and useful palm trees.

Ricardo's garden is just one of Havana's 62,000 huertos -- private urban plots of less than 800 square metres devoted to food production. All enjoy elaborate official support. A sign outside Ricardo's house proclaims that his garden is supported by three separate institutions: the people's Patio Movement for Eco-organic Production, the Agriculture and Pisciculture Network and the Municipal Food Development Committee.

In the Playa borough, the community garden boasts a hectare abundant with parsley, lettuce, spinach and tomatoes. As I arrived, members were tending the plants as volunteers, alongside paid workers. Andreas Verdecia, the technical manager, is employed full-time by Granja Urbana, the government's Urban Farming Institute. He said the produce was 100% organic. "We use compost made by worms. Against fungi we use other fungi:
we try to find the natural way."

At the start of the organic revolution, as the government gave unused city land to anyone who wanted to cultivate it, many first-generation city dwellers remembered their country childhood. Development officials encouraged their efforts, state shops supplied seed and tools. "The secret is in the high productivity of small urban units," Nelso Compagnioni of the Institute for Tropical Agriculture told me -- denying the conventional wisdom behind industrial farming. "Every dollar of produce on a small plot costs 25 cents to produce: as soon as you increase the area you get higher costs -- more workers, lower yields, more complex irrigation. And we have no need for transport: customers collect their food on the way home from work."

Not just sponsored by government, urban organic farming is also a grassroots movement. One of its pioneers is Vilda Figueroa, a chemist and animal nutritionist. She and her companion Jose Lama have converted their suburban house and garden into a demonstration centre with scores of labelled jars on shelves, plants in beds and pots all round the house and dried herbs in packs. "Organic growing is not a Cuban tradition," she said. "We were like missionaries, going round with our organic stuff in bags. We promote the style of life as well as the economic benefits: the health benefits of less sugar, more fresh vegetables. ..." She and José are regular radio and TV talk-show guests and receive thousands of letters a year.

CUBA'S ORGANIC EXPERIMENT was born of necessity when the Soviet Union disintegrated in 1989. This communist state, already under a trade embargo from the usa, lost its remaining sources of supply. In the Soviet era Cuba's economy had been tied to the Soviet bloc in conventional, capital-intensive chemical farming. After 1989 most imports were cut off.

"Our problems must be solved without feed-stocks, fertilizers or fuel,"
said Fidel Castro in 1991. Cuba's 'alternative model', a science-based, low-input sustainable agriculture, was launched -- the largest such conversion in history. Cuban agriculture became a laboratory for non-chemical fertilizers and pesticides, farming in small units with highly motivated producers, and growing food in and around cities.

With 2% of Latin America's population, Cuba has 11% of the scientists.
'Barefoot' agronomists, just graduated, worked in rural co-operatives to invent organic fertilizers and pesticides. Farmers rediscovered sustainable techniques of intercropping and, through necessity, replaced tractors with oxen. The experiment continues to evolve. More than 200 bio-tech centres produce and distribute non-toxic bio-fertilizers and pesticides based on local micro-organisms.

A crucial part of the drive to food sovereignty was the land reforms which switched 40% of farmland from state farms to incentive-based co-operatives. Farmers could sell to farmers' markets offering better prices than the state. Remaining state farms were broken up into basic production units in which the state owns the land but the members manage the business. In the cities, patio gardeners can sell their surplus in approved stalls.

'Checkmate to Neo-liberalism!' proclaims a poster in the offices of the Institute for Tropical Agriculture. Cuban policies have bucked the world trend. Cuban food is what we would call 'organically grown' yet there is not yet an organic certifying institution like our Soil Association. "What matters for us is that it's sustainable," said Leonardo Cirino, an assistant director of anap, the Association of Small Farmers. "Look what happens in Latin America. Organic coffee, but there's no education, no health services, bad housing. For us, organic growing is part of a culture."

Some day, us economic sanctions will be lifted. Cuba will be able to import chemical fertilizers, pesticides and fuel for tractors, foreign investors will want to buy profitable farmland, and urban land may become too valuable for mere gardening. But Cubans engaged in the organic effort are confident that the essentials of their revolution will be preserved.

Vilda Figueroa believes urban agriculture will survive. It created 200,000 jobs last year alone, including many for women. Family co-operatives pay the wages. "Organic growing is more economic because you get higher yields with lower costs. Urban agriculture was producing seven grams of vegetables per head in 1996. Today it's 450 grams."

Mavis Alvares, director of anap and an influential figure in ruling circles, said, "When the americans lift the embargo there will be tough negotiation. It simply isn't the policy of the government to have cheap imported food. We've put an immense educational effort into sustainability."

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Walter Schwarz is co-author with Dorothy Schwarz of Living Lightly published by Jon Carpenter Books.