CUBA GOES ORGANIC
------------------------------------------------
By ROBERT E. SULLIVAN (c) Earth Times News Service
HAVANA--The Cuban revolutionary threat is back. In an
innocuous-looking, unmarked building in the Miramar suburb of Havana
technicians from Fidel Castro's communist government are training
cadres from all over Latin America.
The ideology of the new movement is being exported, along with
equipment, to nearby Venezuela, Columbia and Jamaica, other Latin
American countries, and this time, as far as Europe. Americans, so
far, have been protected by the embargo from the product of the Cuban
revolution: clean food.
The food is clean -- largely free of chemical fertilizers and
poisonous pesticides and herbicides -- because since the fall of the
Big Brother Soviet Union Cuba can't afford them.
And, necessity in this case being the mother of nature, Cuba may be
producing the most chemical free, organic, clean produce in the
world. According to the way they tell it, Cubans are getting so good
at this organic business that agronomists from all over Latin America
come to study it at the Institute for Crop Protection (INISAV) a low
profile center housed in a former private home in the quiet
residential section of Miramar. Trained at INISAV and sent out again
to the world to agitate, have been agronomists from Mexico, Colombia,
Argentina, Spain Brazil, Costa Rica Ecuador Guatemala and Jamaica. At
least a half dozen other countries have signed up, but the discrete
directors at INISAV won't reveal their nationalities because, they
say, the trainees think their home countries will suffer retaliation
from the United States.
The institute has developed a line of completely biological
herbicides and pesticides marketed throughout the island under the
brand name Biasav.
This year Cuba, next the world. Exports of Biasav have begun -Not to
America of course, but to most of the above countries and others. And
in Cuba almost 100,000 small-to-medium sized urban gardens have
sprung up to provide an ever increasing percentage of the country's
vegetable needs. One hundred per cent of the produce if these gardens
is 100 per cent organic - simply because of a central dictate: no
pesticides are allowed inside any city limits. Period. And this comes
from the Castro government which is committed to clean food.
What happened?
Ask any ten Cuban agronomists -- they have 140 Ph.D.s in the
Agriculture Ministry alone, plus 10,000 graduate agronomic engineers
--, why has Cuba gone organic and you'll get the same answer ten
times: it is safer for the campesinos or workers in the field; safer
for the workers who consume, and safer for the workers' families. It
is, after all a socialist country. "Agriculture of the humble, by the
humble and for the humble" said one government functionary.
But all ten will admit, not even pressed, that the real incentive was
the loss of the Soviet support.
When the Soviets were supplying chemical fertilizers, pesticides and
herbicides, and tractor driven equipment to apply them, "we used to
spray the crops every six days," said INISAV engineer Esperanza
Rijo-Camacho "whether they needed it or not."
"Luckily, and I choose my words carefully, luckily, the roof caved in
1989," said Mavis Alvarez of the Cuban Small Farmers' Association
(ANAP) which has decided to go as organic as possible because the
system is sustainable. "It made us pay attention to that which was
already there a| more rational methods."
"We like to call it 'ecological agriculture'," Alvarez said. "It is a
much wider concept which involves harmony with the land, and the
environment.""If we don't save our natural resources, we are without
a basis for development," Alvarez said in her office in a converted
rich family's mansion, also in Miramar.
" The campesino in the land is much more able to cooperate with the
environment" than large scale farms, she said.
" He has traditionally been conservative because of the impact on his
land."
And in Cuba the small farmer is no small potatoes. "We have about
250,000 members and with their families that averages out to about a
million people working the land," she said, "And we are not a
non-governmental organization. We are part of the revolution and
support it."
" It is not a matter of convincing anyone" like American organic
farmers sometimes try to do, " she said, "the state is committed to
ecological farming."
Yes it is, said Juan Jose Leon Vega, the director of external
relations for the Agriculture Ministry. " I don't believe many people
know how big organic farming in Cuba really is," he said in his large
office atop a six story ministry building. How big? About 1,500,000
hectares (3.7 million acres) totally biological, he said, of a total
of about 2,500,000 (6.2 million) non-sugar hectares of farmland.
The rest, because of shortages, get precious few artificial
fertilizers and with some exceptions like rice, virtually no chemical
pesticides or herbicides.
"This is true, " said Leon-Vega, drawing in his ministerial voice for
a proclamation of some importance, "For two reasons."First is the
disappearance within one year, within one year, of Soviet aid,
including millions of tons of fertilizers, insecticide and
pesticides, all our tractors, and more importantly, the oil to run
them.
"The second is the blockade. It now costs about $800,000 to
$1,000,000 per shipment, of anything, not even counting the
contents," he said implying that shipping would be a heck of a lot
cheaper to and from Florida, about 90 miles away.
One big result of the double trouble was the 1993 decision to break
up the big state owned farms and give the land to the campesinos.
When Fidel Castro came to power in 1959, about 20 per cent of the
land was put in the private hands of campesinos who farmed it and 80
per cent held by the state in the form of huge soviet-style farms.
Because, according to Leon-Vega, among other things "animal traction"
is more efficient in small parcels, than on big farms, the government
did a land office business getting rid of huge haciendas, by breaking
them up into small parcels and selling them on long term mortgages to
the workers who work them.
The result is now some 74 per cent of the non-sugar farmland is in
private hands either in the form of cooperatives, or in small farms.
"In times of difficulty we cannot efficiently run big estates," he
said. "Individual farmers can use smaller scale of production.""To
that end, we - our ministry - trained 200,000 oxen to plow," he said.
"You should have seen that."
"We have, " he said, the most organic agriculture production in the
world."How can he be so sure? It is a socialist country: the ministry
imports 100 per cent of the chemical fertilizers - down to less than
a sixth of pre soviet levels, and all the chemical pesticides and
herbicides, - a fraction of a sixth.
"And," says "Leon-Vega, "We decide who gets it," which generally
means large scale mono-cultures which call for some help, like sugar
and rice.
Two hypothetical questions for the minister:
1) What would happen if he got an unlimited supply of cheap
chemicals? "First of all, we are not completely organic. It is a
dream, but we can never be 100 per cent organic.
"But we would still go ahead with biological agriculture. That is the
basic philosophy."
2) What would happen if the blockade disappeared?"The day the market
opens Cuba will be the most important source for America for organic
products."Americans want clean food. We grow the cleanest food on the
continent. No other country on the continent has the capacity, the
possibilities, and the initiative. Also, we are close."
" That coffee you are drinking, " he said, "is organic."Well, maybe
almost organic. In an unescorted drive through the western coffee
producing provinces - encouraged by government spokesmen, a pair of
reporters shared some home-made rum drinks, and some off-the-cuff
chats with campesinos who said they spread the nitrogen rich chemical
urea whenever they can get it. One said he was exhausted from
spending the entire day spreading the chemical compound at a
state-run coffee plantation. He was glad of it, he said, because
according to the government policy, the campesinos get more money if
the production - quality and quantity - is up.However, the key
appears to be just what the minister said it would be: availability.
There isn't much of it to go around in the countryside.What is around
in the countryside is evidence of a socialist system working with
private landowners. When the system decides to go organic, the
campesinos have little choice. They go organic too. But they get a
lot of help, especially along the line of biological pest control.
Cuban private farmers can either go it alone, in which case they rent
tractors and buy seeds, fertilizers, and pest sprays from the credit
service companies set up by the government, or they join forces in a
cooperative, which buys, collectively, its tractors seeds, and pest
repellants from the government. The pest repellants are biological.
But even better: they are local.
The Crop Protection Institute has some 222 local Centers for the
Reproduction of Entomophages and Entomopathogens (CREES) which
produce extremely inexpensive biological agents made up of bugs who
eat pesky bugs, virus that combat bad viruses, larvae that kill other
pests, and all manner of natural weapons to combat what campesinos
universally call "the plague," be it animal, virus or fungus.
In some cases the sprays are made up of sliced up bodies of the pest
themselves, mixed with water sprayed in the often successful theory
that no species wants to hang around with the smell of its own
dead.In all cases the stuff is made down the road - and, if all goes
well, at a time when it is needed locally, production, distribution
and market timing not being things for which socialist countries are
usually most famous.Socialist countries, are, however, noted for
committees. The Republic of Chile Credit Services in Vinales, Pinar
del Rio Province, is no exception. Seven technically trained experts
serve a credit service group of only 33 owners, each of which has
about 7.5 hectares (18 acres), of mixed farms. When farmer Cirrillo
Rodrequez, 65, has a problem seven technically trained members of the
local government committee are available to talk to him. Even if he
doesn't have a problem, the agronomic engineers show up anyway,
saying something akin to we're from the government, we're here to
help you. And help they do. They know the signs indicating which
"plague" is hitting his rice, corn, root crops, pigs, chickens and
vegetables, and what biological products can be applied to help. He
gets the sprays from the local CREE.
As fertilizer Rodrequez gets, from the committee, rotted leftover
vegetation from industrial sugar and tobacco production.In the dry
season he rents a tractor to take from a nearby low-lying swamp dead
vegetation similar to peat moss that provides humus for the
soil."That is a traditional method that campesinos have used for
generations," said Miguel Dominguez, a provincial agronomic engineer
"but what we do now is explain how and why it works: basically we are
recovering the topsoil and humus eroded into the swamp from the
mountainside. We are recycling.""Other soil conservation methods are
not traditional, " he said. "For instance we give any campesino who
asks any trees he wants, free, to help in soil conservation. We also
guide them on which are the best, and how to care for them."
As for Rodrequez himself, what, for him, is the difference since
1989?"It is pretty much the same as in my grandfather's day, except
now and again we get a tractor."And the fertilizer?"Well, once, a few
years back, I put a lot of urea on the rice," he said in full view of
five members of the local committee, " and the whole lot grew up like
crazy, got very tall, and then fell over from their own height."If
that sounded a bit too preachy, he later admitted that if he had a
shot at some more urea, he'd use it, but a lot less. Not much chance
of overdoing it however, since, as minister Leon-Vega explained, and
agronomic engineer Dominguez confirmed in Vinales, the central
government controls who gets the chemicals. And a philosophical
decision means the peasant farmer out in the boondocks, who is not
working on large scale production of a single crop, isn't very likely
to get his hands on chemicals, unless the system breaks down, which
it doesn't.If the country guy is unlikely to get many chemicals, his
city cousin is entirely without. Castro's government has banned the
use of any chemical fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides within the
borders of any Cuban municipality - to protect the workers, their
families and the water they drink.
This is not an inconsiderable factor.According to minister Leon-Vega
there are exactly 2,600 large scale organic gardens in cities
throughout the island, 3,600 smaller, intensive gardens, and 93,948
little parcels run by families for their own use, and every single
mother's son of them is an organic farmer. How do you know that, - so
precisely, Mr. Minister?"We sell them their seeds, and their
fertilizer and their pest controls, and it is all organic."
The result, by and large is clean food for Cubans. Marty Bourque of
Food First, an Oakland California think tank specializing in food
policy worldwide, said " because of the drastic reduction of
pesticides and fertilizers overall in Cuba, it has to be much cleaner
than any other country, in general terms. And in particular terms
too. In fruit and vegetables, for example, and these are very
important areas because the stuff comes in fresh off the fields."In
the large- scale production of such things as sugar, rice, and
potatoes, they use very little insecticide, and only where they
absolutely have to, and then only on the areas that absolutely need
it, unlike some places in the United States where they, whether they
admit it or not, use pesticides by the calendar, whether they need it
or not.
"The food is not labeled organic, or certified organic, it just is
organic. And it is not a two-tier market with organic food only for
those who can afford it. It is organic food for everyone."What are
the chances of it reaching American shores? Very remote.One entry to
the American market might have been through setting up a joint
venture with some European countries to produce the biological pest
control solutions.
"We had a lot of interested parties, " said Dr. Emilio Fernandez of
the Crop Protection Institute, "but they were afraid if they did
business with us, their own exports (to the United States) would be
cut off."So today it is Cuba. The world tomorrow, and the United
States maybe a little after that.
************************************************
EUROPEAN ORGANIC FARMING TO SOAR - FAO PORTUGAL : July 26, 2000
OPORTO - Organic farming is set to grow rapidly across Europe in the
coming
years amid demand for food produced with a minimum of pesticides and
synthetic fertilisers, the Food and Agriculture Organisation said
yesterday.
In a report to a regional European conference, the Rome-based FAO
said
retail sales from organic farming in the European Union would climb to
25-30
billion euros by 2005 from five billion in 1997, if growth rates and
profitability remained at current levels.
At an overall persistent growth rate in the EU of around 25
percent per year
for the past 10 years, organic agriculture is without doubt one of the
fastest growing sectors of agricultural production, the report said.
There is a growing demand for organic foods driven primarily by consumers'
perceptions of the quality and safety of these foods, the report added.
The FAO, part of the United Nations Organisation, added that
organic farming
was as yet small in scale in European countries that were not members of
the
15-state EU due to restricted manufacturing and processing capacities.
But the report noted that central and eastern European countries had a
higher percentage of rural residents. In their richer EU neighbours, rural
populations were seen benefiting from organic agriculture because it
diversifies and stabilises income, as well as increases biological
diversity
and helps to sustain the environment.
Organic agriculture is therefore likely to become of more interest
to
governments in these countries than the present market share of products
would indicate, the FAO said. The report noted that governments needed to
monitor safety in organic produce as in any other type of food.
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