Small Solutions Top Cuba Agro Event

By Mike Fuller

Havana, May 14 (Prensa Latina) The buses were parked for blocks around the Hotel Nacional as over 500 Cuban and foreign participants at the 8th Organic and Sustainable Agriculture Encounter this week brainstormed for healthy ways to grow food in a hostile world.
The posters hung in four simultaneous sessions explained the use of magnetically treated water for bigger tomatoes, sunflowers as pest barriers, honey and color traps to combat aphids and even dried and ground earthworms as nutritive flour for human consumption.
A gnarled hand pointed to a volume on cooperativism lying on the book table with others. "I have that one," said its owner, who admired with his friend the collection on display by Cuban, the UN Food and Agriculture and many non-governmental organizations.
Literature on shortened cycles, extended agro-calendars, project startup guides, accounting, semi protected crops, dehydration techniques, bio-gas, seed production and entomofauna was a formidable testimony to the progress of organic and sustainable agriculture in Cuba over the last 15 years.

BORN FROM NEED, HERE TO STAY

"It began in the early 1990's when individuals started growing their own poultry, rabbits and pigs," said to Prensa Latina Dr. Jose Emilio Llibre of the Cuban Animal Production Association, who chaired the Urban Agriculture meeting.
They also produced vegetables, and by 1994 he said the State saw the phenomenon as a source of labor, food security and way to occupy people left idle after the collapse of the socialist bloc.
A national group of urban farmers was formed and Llibre said that even now with slightly better economic indicators "it looks like urban agriculture is here to stay."
Training, chemical free production and cooperation with Germany, the Netherlands, Spain and other countries have made Havana a world reference of urban agriculture and currently allow it to produce 80% of its vegetables.
Llibre said profit-driven violations of organic codes and unsympathetic priorities of decision makers for some grassroots initiatives are part of a complex panorama in sustainable culture here, which he reminds was born spontaneously from need.

PROFOUND CULTURAL IMPACT

Adolfo Rodriguez of the Institute of Fundamental Investigations in Tropical Agriculture chaired the Urban Agriculture workshop, citing thousands of tons of organic food produced in the last decade, intense training, permaculture awareness, 300,000 new jobs, childrens clubs and new diets as part of the cultural impact of urban agriculture in Cuba.
He specifically mentioned several star operators of "reference gardens" from the audience, who stood for applause.
Individuals, cooperatives, municipal, provincial and national levels all were represented at the event, and Dr. Luis Vazquez of the Institute of Investigations in Vegetable Health gave a fascinating paper on experimental agriculture in Cuba.
Sharing data from Credit and Services Cooperatives, Farm Production Cooperatives, and Basic Units of Cooperative Production, he explained the importance of context in each case, and said it was important to avoid myopic solutions and vital to seek compatibility.
At the end of the first day Mario Gonzalez Novo of the Cuban Association of Forestry and Agricultural Technicians, of the organizing committee told Prensa Latina that 400 Cubans had come from all over the country, and 125 foreigners from 25 nations.

SMALL SOLUTONS TO WORLD FOOD CRISIS

When asked what had been the best moment so far, he quickly said "when Dr. Peter Rossett said the time has come for food sovereignty."
This US proponent of small solutions to the world food security crisis said he has been in Cuba over 20 times, and is known for his work with Food First, the Institute for Food and Development Policy and Via Campesina.
Rossett said in his presentation that "Three decades of neoliberal policy and free trade, dismantling of national food production systems, exporting and subsidies are enemies of family agriculture and campesina sectors."
He explained their tactic is to first flood a local market with cheap imports, then once it is captured substitute with more expensive products.
In a special comment to Prensa Latina he said the current decentralization of Cuban agricultural decisions to a more local level is good.
"Imagine a State Minister is told to increase agricultural quotas by a certain amount in a given time. That is much more complicated than on the municipal level, which is how things are to be done now in Cuba with the new measures implemented by Raul Castro."
When asked if he had any particular message for a US reader, the author of What's So Beautiful about Small Farms smiled and said "I think all countries have something to learn from Cuba."