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By Mary Stucky, Minnesota Public Radio
April 11, 2001
Part three of three parts
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Cuba is in the midst of an unprecedented experiment in organic agriculture. When the Soviet Union collapsed 10 years ago, so did Cuba's economy. Before long, the island nation faced a severe food shortage. Lacking money to import food or the fuel and fertilizer to grow it, the Cuban government made a bold move, embracing alternative agricultural methods including organic farming and natural pest control.
THERE WERE DRAMATIC CHANGES in Cuban agriculture after the Soviet Union collapsed. Excluding sugar, 60 percent of the farmland in Cuba is now cultivated without chemical fertilizer or pest control. Huge state farms have been broken up, sometimes even given to individual farmers, who are paid based on productivity. And in another nod to capitalism, there are new private, for-profit farmer's markets.
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Many Cubans are proud of proving alternative agricultural methods can feed a country's people. Fernando Funes made that point in the busy lunchroom at the agricultural research facility he runs near Havana.
"In the whole world, we are a handful of people trying to go ahead with this struggle, and we have to show that we are producing more healthy products that is healthy for nature," he says.
"I don't know what will happen in the future, but I guess my opinion, we are not going to come back because we have been proving very well that this paradigm is going to substitute the other one."
Funes is out to spread the message that even the most chemical fertilizer- and pesticide-dependent farming can be transformed. And folks like the University of Minnesota's Bill Wilcke agree. Wilcke, who works for the u's Institute for Sustainable Agriculture was in Cuba as part of a tour to see what the Cubans have achieved.
"We would be wise to take a look at what happened before it hits us. Heavy reliance on export crops and selling them to a few external customers and buying the inputs, the food from other places. I think we have to think about the scale of our agriculture and the technology that we use," he says. "If something happened to prevent us from having fuel to run tractors to plant crops, we just do not have alternatives right now."
It can be argued that Cuba's model may have more relevance for developing nations. Some economists say it's foolish for countries like the U.S. to imitate Cuba. Why go back to what some call medieval farming methods, why use valuable urban land to grow food? In fact, some argue that countries don't need to grow their own food. Why not import cheap food and, in a global economy, concentrate on big-money exports?
Minor Sinclair rejects that argument. Sinclair lived in Cuba during the worst of the food crisis, working for Oxfam, a British charity working on hunger issues.
"In looking at cheap food imports, you see food dumping, which competes against the local producers, which ends up forcing them out of business and forcing them to migrate to the urban areas and develops markets for big agricultural enterprises. In Cuba they have their own interests in seeing as much food being produced domestically, to save on their foreign currency costs and not to compete against the local producers," Sinclair says.
For now, American business can have nothing to do with Cuba, at least officially, thanks to the U.S. embargo on trade. Agribusinesses, including Twin Cities-based Cargill, are lobbying hard against the embargo. They favor open global markets and an end to trade embargoes generally as political weapons.
But while he'd also like to see an end to the embargo, Cuban agricultural researcher Roberto Caballeros hopes his nation will remain self-sufficient in food.
"I hope that we will always keep the protection, the autonomy and the independence we have had all these years. That means nobody can change our strategies of development. And mainly no businessman," he says.
Cubans are working hard to develop export markets for their own products, seeing organic food as a potential gold mine. In February, the first certified organic sugar from Cuba was sold to chocolate-makers in Europe, where there's a huge demand for other organic food as well.
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"Those people are going to be the salvation of the country when it hits the global market, because their products are going to be pure and in such demand," she says.
Despite the lure of niche markets, there's skepticism about the depth of the Cuban commitment to agricultural alternatives as the country pulls out of its crisis. Why continue to farm the slow, back-breaking way, hoeing weeds by hand? Why not buy yield-boosting chemicals?
Minor Sinclair predicts Cubans will eventually use a pragmatic combination of organic practices and chemicals.
"The changes taking place in the Cuban countryside are going to shape Cuba's insertion into the global marketplace. And it does not want to play this role of a kind of cheap labor, agricultural commodity exporter where their profits continually go down while their costs go up. They want to do something different. Will Cuba's agriculture be able to be a lighthouse for other developing countries in the region and in some way even for farmers here in the United States? I hope so," he says.
Maybe someday. But most experts do not expect to see a system of organic farming and urban gardens widely embraced in the U.S. anytime soon, at least not without a food crisis of Cuban proportions. But the Cuban commitment to feeding its own people cheaply, without expensive chemicals, may be a model for developing nations intent on preserving a livelihood for their peasant farmers.
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