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Edited on Sat Sep-06-08 09:34 AM by Judi Lynn
Have seen articles in internet S searches which indicate groups from the U.S. have been going to Cuba to study these Cuban techniques for quite a while, and coming back very impressed. Articles just don't get published in ordinary U.S. media, of course. Cuba is simply off limits unless there's something which can be twisted for propaganda purposes. ~snip~ For the vast majority of urban Cubans since the Revolution, food came from a grocery store or supermarket. Growing food was generally considered a part of campesino (peasant) life, left behind on the move to the city. To encourage small scale food production in urban areas, the government gave unused land to anyone who wanted to cultivate it. Havana, with a fifth of the island's population, was a priority area for urban food production. The provincial Ministry of Agriculture (MinAgri) set up an urban agriculture department to give support to the new gardeners, which was delivered through the activity of the MinAgri outreach workers (extensionists) based in each of the city's municipalities, and through direct support given to community efforts. The department was also responsible for the shops which supplied seeds, tools and sundries to the growers. The three types of garden supported were known as huertos, organoponicos and autoconsumos
This all created, almost overnight, a new urban gardening culture. By the mid 1990's there were over 28,000 huertos in Havana city province, run by 50-100,000 individuals. Some of this new army of gardeners could remember farming with their parents 35 years ago, before they moved to Havana. For many it was an entirely new occupation.
Huerto is Spanish for 'kitchen garden' and these are the equivalent of allotments or smallholdings in Britain. They may be individual, family or collective and some are attached to institutions such as day care centres and schools. They range in size from postage stamp to two or more hectares. Garden clubs are comparable to allotment societies and may be a gathering of gardeners in a particular locality or may be the overseers of a large patch, a parcela, divided into a number of huertos. There are more than 19,000 individuals organised into more than 800 clubs throughout Havana.
Auto-consumos are horticultural units attached to colleges, hospitals and factories. The workers may be part or full time, working by choice or placed there as a disciplinary punishment by their workplace. The primary object is to produce food for the occupants/workers' lunches.
Organopónicos originally were defunct hydroponic units which had been re-filled with composted sugar cane waste and used to grow vegetables and herbs organically. The success of this conversion led to new ones being constructed As the ground itself is not cultivated they could be built on any waste land including old car parks and building sites. Some are state owned, others are cooperatives. The vegetables produced are sold to the local communities, on-site or at the farmers' markets. Beyond quota, the profits of the state-run units are split between the state and the workers. 'Organopónico' has become the general name for an urban market garden, with beds raised by mulching as well as by containing the soil. More: http://www.cosg.org.uk/greencuba.htmCuba’s Second Revolution by Will Raap
~snip~ Organiponico are organic farms and gardens of a few thousand square feet to several acres located in urban areas. Vacant lots, old parking lots, abandoned building sites, spaces between roads, any available site (even rooftops and balconies) were taken over by thousands of new urban farmers trying to feed themselves and make some money.
In Havana alone, 30,000 residents tend 8,000 community gardens and small farms producing vegetables, fruit, eggs, medicinal plants, honey, and such livestock as rabbits and poultry. These urban farmers produce 30% of the city’s vegetables and perishable food. All this produce is organic; chemical pesticides for agriculture are not allowed within the city limits.
Outside of Havana the Organiponico movement is also growing rapidly with impressive results. In 1999 urban agriculture produced 46% of Cuba’s fresh vegetables, 38% of non-citrus fruit, and 13% of its roots and tubers. The government supports this movement by making land available, by allowing relatively unrestricted free-market sales of the food, and by supporting organic research centers that are making impressive advances in biofertilizers and biopesticides. Cuba leads the developing world in small-scale composting, organic soil reclamation, irrigation and crop rotation research, animal powered traction (oxen) and other innovative practices. More: http://www.greens.org/s-r/38/38-06.html
Organoponico plaza, Havana, Cuba. Photograph: James Pagram~snip~ Cuba's organic revolutionThe collapse of the Soviet Union forced Cuba to become self-reliant in its agricultural production. The country's innovative solution was urban organic farming, the creation of 'organoponicos'. But will it survive a change of government? Ed Ewing reports guardian.co.uk, Friday April 04 2008 01:02 BST \
when the USSR collapsed in 1990/91, Cuba's ability to feed itself collapsed with it. "Within a year the country had lost 80% of its trade," explains the Cuba Organic Support Group (COSG). Over 1.3m tonnes of chemical fertilisers a year were lost. Fuel for transporting produce from the fields to the towns dried up. People started to go hungry. The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (UNFAO) estimated that calorie intake plunged from 2,600 a head in the late 1980s to between 1,000 and 1,500 by 1993.
Radical action was needed, and quickly. "Cuba had to produce twice as much food, with less than half the chemical inputs," according to the COSG. Land was switched from export crops to food production, and tractors were switched for oxen. People were encouraged to move from the city to the land and organic farming methods were introduced.
"Integrated pest management, crop rotation, composting and soil conservation were implemented," says the COSG. The country had to become expert in techniques like worm composting and biopesticides. "Worms and worm farm technology is now a Cuban export," says Dr Stephen Wilkinson, assistant director of the International Institute for the Study of Cuba.
Thus, the unique system of organoponicos, or urban organic farming, was started. "Organoponicos are really gardens," explains Wilkinson, "they use organic methods and meet local needs."
"Almost overnight," says the COSG, the ministry of agriculture established an urban gardening culture. By 1995 Havana had 25,000 huertos – allotments, farmed by families or small groups – and dozens of larger-scale organoponicos, or market gardens. The immediate crisis of hunger was over.
Now, gardens for food take up 3.4% of urban land countrywide, and 8% of land in Havana. Cuba produced 3.2m tonnes of organic food in urban farms in 2002 and, UNFAO says, food intake is back at 2,600 calories a day.
Organoponico plaza A visit to Havana's largest organoponico, the three-hectare Organoponico Plaza, which lies a stone's throw from the city's Plaza de la Revolución and the desk of Raul Castro, confirms that the scheme is doing well. Rows of strikingly neat irrigated raised beds are home to seasonal crops of lettuces, spring onions, chives, garlic and parsley. More: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/apr/04/organics.food?gusrc=rss&feed=environment
Havana
Revisted: Cuba's Urban Vegetable Farms ~snip~ He gestured to the rows of vegetables--beets, spinach, chives, planted in neat beds. As we made our way through the herb garden, he then started explaining the benefits of the herbs to me: siempre viva is for headaches, chamomile helps with skin problems, anise is to give you a strong stomach. Or, as Nestor put it, "Le da animo." It gives you spirit. We stopped under the shade of fruit trees, where he showed me a passionfruit, still green on the tree, and then a noni fruit, pale yellow and naturally pocked. He picked a few small ripe bananas for me to try. "If this wasn't a garden, it would be filled with garbage. Instead, all year long we have food for the people," Nestor said, then added the distinctly Cuban phrase, "Tiene que resolver." "Resolver" has been Cuban's battle cry, chant, groan since the Special Period. It means to find a way to survive, to make the impossible, possible. When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1989, Cuba lost 80 percent of its imports. Known as the "The Special Period," government food rations were cut in half, public buses didn't run, and blackouts rolled through the cities. Hoping to crush the government, the United States tightened the embargo by passing the Cuban Democracy Act (1992) that prevents the docking at a U.S. port of any ship that has docked in Cuba six months prior or that plans to visit Cuba within six months after. This further reduced food and medicine reaching the island.More: http://www.citydirt.net/2008/05 / Organic Farming Feeds A Nation by Renee Kjartan
A recent report shows that organic farming--often considered an insignificant part of the food supply--can feed an entire country.
Titled "Cultivating Havana: Urban Agriculture and Food Security in the Years of Crisis," the report found that in Cuba, many of the foods people eat every day are grown without synthetic fertilizers and toxic pesticides. The author, Catherine Murphy, works with the Institute for Food and Development Policy/Food First. Based in Oakland, CA, the group works for sustainable farming.
How did Cuba's organic food movement begin? It took a severe crisis for this to happen.
Cubans have been teaching this method to Venezuelans!
Workshops
The garden - named after Mr Chavez's hero Simon Bolivar, the 19-Century independence fighter - holds workshops for university students and organises visits for schoolchildren. "They can then replicate what they've learnt in their homes," Juan says.
"Even if they do not have a garden, they can plant vegetables in boxes and put them on window sills or rooftops."
Successful stall
The harvested crops are sold from a stall by the garden. The prices are lower than in the supermarkets. Four organic lettuces, for example, cost less than half a dollar. The stall opens at 0830 each morning - by lunchtime, most of the vegetables, fruits, herbs and flowers have been sold.
Text: Nathalie Malinarich. Photos: Emma Lynch. Small photo journal: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi/picture_gallery/07/americas_harvest_in_caracas/html/1.stm
Caracas, Venezuela Embraces City Gardening for Improved Nutrition, Jobs Linked by Michael Levenston
Photo: Urban farm located in central Caracas, Venezuelan next to the Hilton Hotel. http://www.cityfarmer.info/caracas-venezuela-embraces-city-gardening-for-improved-nutrition-jobs
Before the revolution that threw out dictator Fulgencio Batista in 1959, and to some extent during the years of Soviet support for Cuba, the island followed a typical pattern of colonial food production: It produced luxury export crops while importing food for its own people. In 1990 over 50 percent of Cuba's food came from imports. Says the report: "In the Caribbean, food insecurity is a direct result of centuries of colonialism that prioritized the production of sugar and other cash crops for export, neglecting food crops for domestic consumption." In spite of efforts by the revolutionary government to correct this situation, Cuba continued in this mold until the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1989.
The withdrawal of Soviet aid meant that 1,300,000 tons of chemical fertilizers, 17,000 tons of herbicides and 10,000 tons of pesticides could no longer be imported, according to the report.
One of Cuba's responses to the shock was to develop "urban agriculture," intensifying the previously established National Food Program, which aimed at taking thousands of poorly utilized areas, mainly around Havana, and turning them into intensive vegetable gardens. Planting in the city instead of only in the countryside reduced the need for transportation, refrigeration and other scarce resources. More: http://www.wafreepress.org/46/organic_farming.html
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