Cuba – the country that transitioned from conventional agriculture to large-scale semi-organic farming
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Before the collapse of the Soviet Union Cuba was importing fertilisers, pesticides , farm equipment and and the oil to run them along with more than half its food from its socialist trading partners. With the end of the Soviet support and the continuing US trade embargo, Cuba was plunged into a food crisis as it was unable to import food or ferliser as the Soviet collapse witnessed a 90% drop in Cuba’s external trade. Fertiliser and pesticde imports fell by 80% and oil imports by 50%. Isolated, and with its population facing the loss of a meal a day, Cuba needed to double its food production by using half the inputs required by conventional agriculture.
Cuba thus embarked on a remarkable agricultural experiment, the first nation-wide test of alternative agriculture. In the mid-1980s the Cuban government directed state-run research institutions to begin investigating alternative methods to reduce environmental impacts, improve soil fertility and increase harvests. Within six months of the Soviet collapse, Cuba began privitising industrialised state farms, divding them amongst former employees and creating a network of small farms. Government-sponsored farmers’ markets brought the peasant farmers higher profits by cutting out the middle men. Goverment programs also encouraged organic agriculture and farming on vacant city lots. Lacking access to fertilisers and pesticides, the food grown in the new small private farms and thousand of tiny urban market gardens became organic not through choice but necessity.
20.07.2018 In this Our Changing Climate environmental video essay, I look at the history of Cuban sustainable agriculture and farming. Specifically, I look at why sustainable and organic methods, such as urban farms and market gardens, proliferated in Cuban farming, and what that might mean for farmers markets and local food systems in countries like the United States. Some of the principles of Cuban agriculture could be used to build a system in opposition to our current industrial food and factory farm system.
As David Montgomery states in his book, Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations,
“In a move pretty much the opposite of the green revolution that transformed global agriculture based on increased use of irrigation, oil, chemical fertilizers and pesticides, the Cuban government adapted agriculture to local conditions and developed biological methods of fertilization and pest control. It created a network of more than two hundred local agricultural extension offices around the country to advise farmers on low-input and no-till farming methods, as well as biological pest control.
Cuba stopped exporting sugar and began to grow its own food again. Within a decade, the Cuban diet rebounded to its former level without food imports or the use of agrochemicals. The Cuban experience shows that agroecology can form a viable basis for agriculture without industrial methods or biotechnology. Unintentionally, the U.S. trade embargo turned Cuba into a nation-scale experiment in alternative agriculture.
Some look to the Cuban example as a model for employing locally adapted ecological insight and knowledge instead of standardized mechanization and agrochemistry to feed the world. They see the solution not simply as producing cheap food, but keeping small farms-and therefore farmers-on the land, and even in cities. Thousands of commercial urban gardens grew up throughout the island, hundreds in Havana alone. Land slated for development was converted to acres of vegetable gardens that supplied markets where local people bought tomatoes, lettuce, potatoes and other crops.”
The only drawback in Cuba’s agricultural system is that milk and meat still continue to remain in short supply after more than two decades.
19.06.2015 Many people in America are proponents of the organic food movement, and worried about the potentially harmful effects of pesticides on their health or the environment. In Cuba, farmers have gone organic for a very different reason – they had to. In this final instalment of our series “The Cuban Evoltion” Jeffrey Brown looks at food and farming.
1.08.2020 German with English subtitles. In Cuba more than 4,000 urban farms produce 1.5 million tonnes of vegetables, without pesticides or chemical fertilisers. This innovation was triggered by the hardship of the early 1990s, when the Soviet Union collapsed and Cuba suddenly lost its main supplier of pesticides. To avoid starvation, the country had no choice but to develop natural alternatives.
16.03.2017 Over the years, Cuban farmers have had difficulty persuading their children – who want to move to bigger cities for higher-paying jobs – to stay in the family business. To try and turn things around, cattle ranchers in the Cuban province of Sancti Spiritus have come up with a youth program called Future Ranchers. The goal is to put the fun back into farming, using alternative methods like teaching rodeo skills to children. Correspondent Michael Voss reports on Cuba’s farming future.
16.11.2016 [mostly in Spanish] Cuba’s former President Fidel Castro celebrates his 90th birthday today (August 13, 2016). Things have changed on the island nation since Castro’s brother Raul replaced him as president in February 2008. Cuba’s urban organic farms are aiming to supply citizens directly with sustainable fresh food and challenge the reliance on food imported from abroad.
5.08.2016 culture. In the last installment of our Connecting with Cuba series, TWILA’s Avery Davidson shows us how Cuban farmers are trying their hand at urban agriculture to meet the demand for fresh food.
1.06.2015 Years of isolation and short stocks of fossil fuels have created agricultural practices in Cuba that are radically organic. Al Jazeera’s Nick Clark reports from Havana.
2.10.2013 – Part 1
Part 2
9.10.2011 En Espanol. En 1959 comienza la revolución cubana, luego de muchos años de preparación. La victoria del socialismo en la isla conlleva a Estados Unidos de imponer un bloqueo económico internacional contra Cuba. A raíz de esto la economía se torna en un intercambio muy fluido con URSS, principalmente de la caña de azúcar cubana por casi todos los recursos básicos. En 1989, con la caída de la URSS, Cuba se encuentra sin abastecimiento, generando un desequilibrio en la economía, que provoco un problema de seguridad alimentaria, dejando a un país en el caos. Ahí es donde a través de 20 años de trabajo, se desarrolla la Agricultura Urbana ecológica como respuesta a la crisis alimentaria, basado sobre valores de autoabastecimiento de los alimentos, educación y participación popular intergeneracional y multidisciplinaria. Este movimiento exporta sabiduría milenaria en un contexto de crisis mundial posicionando a Cuba como lideres en la producción de alimentos sustentables y ecológicos.
Presentation
11.01.2017 Cuba has experienced dramatic change in its agricultural sector. Prompted in part by the loss of economic support from the former Soviet Union, including fertilizers, pesticides, tractors and petroleum, and dramatic agrarian reform that encouraged private and cooperative land ownership, Cuban farmers have increased food production through smaller scale, low-input farming practices, and nearly one fourth of Cuban farms are organic. Although Cuba continues to depend on costly food imports, its innovations in agroecology science and practice have reduced food insecurity in Cuba and present a thought provoking model for sustainable food production. PRESENTERS • Fernando R. Funes-Monzote, PhD., Agroecologist Researcher, Consultant and Farmer • Audley Burford, Latin America Marketing Manager, CHS Inc. • Shannen Bornsen Nettleton, International Sales Manager, Seneca Foods Corporation • Chris Bercaw, Partner, Dorsey & Whitney LLP
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Special feature on Finca Marta in Artemisa province and its owner, Fernando Funes http://fincamarta.com/
31.03.2017 Finca Marta – Havana, Cuba Atop a hill just 18 miles from Havana sits Finca Marta, an organic farm perched on the forefront of the agroecology movement in Cuba. Farmer Fernando Funes believes sustainable farming is the future of agriculture in his country, and he’s knocking on the door of making it happen. His farm supplies 30 restaurants in Havana, and he’s not finished!
21.09.2018 Finca Marta, an organic farm 20 miles outside of Havana, was just a dream for Fernando Funes. But with hard work, good ideas and vision, dreams can come true. I sat down with Fernando on my most recent trip to Cuba and had a conversation about the organic farming movement in his country. We talked about how it emerged, what it is today, and where he thinks it can go in the future. This is the first of a two-part interview conducted in June, 2018.
In the floral valleys of Cuba’s Matanzas province, bees are flourishing through old-fashioned farming, without the threat of pesticides that have decimated populations across the world, and their organic honey, which has found a ready-market in Europe, has joined rum and cigars as one of Cuba’s quality exports.
The United States embargo imposed on Cuba for over half a century has long stung the island’s economy. But, deprived of access to modern technology, Cuba’s beekeepers have turned to traditional, more environmentally friendly methods instead. Ed Augustin reports.
