Cuba's Forced Urban AgroEcology

When I think of Cuba, urban farming isn't the first thing that comes to mind. Pastel colored antique cars, certainly; forbidden cigars; garlicky lime-marinated pork sandwiches...but ask anyone my age about the Cuban missile crisis and the longest trade embargo in history and we only vaguely know what we've seen on TV. And by TV I mean that one episode of Seinfeld where they got all excited about smoking some Cuban cigars.

I want this to not be the place I get my information, but I'm pretty sure this episode is literally the only reason I know about the embargo.

In 1958, with armed conflicts between the Cuban government and Fidel Castro's rebels escalating, the United States imposed an arms embargo between ourselves and Cuba. In response, Castro's new regime purchased their armaments from the Soviet Union; the United States in turn greatly reduced the number of tons of brown sugar Cuba could import to the United States, prompting the Soviet Union to buy the sugar instead. In October 1960, with tensions rising in the Cold War, an American-owned oil refinery in Cuba refused to refine a shipment of Soviet crude oil. The Cuban government responded by nationalizing all three oil refineries in the country (which all happened to be American owned) without compensation to the owners; and the Eisenhower administration responded in turn by imposing the trade embargo that has endured for nearly sixty years.

From an American point of view, life didn't change much. For Cuba, largely reliant on a super power that dissolved in the 1990's in the fall of the Soviet Union, life came grinding to a halt. The bulk of Cuba's agricultural industry was devoted to the export of sugarcane, with 57 percent of food production being imported from the Soviet Union. Cuba was reliant on massive amounts of pesticides, chemical fertilizers, and machinery, all supplied by the Soviet Union; but in turn, soil quality was degrading, key crops like rice were declining, and agricultural pests were on the rise.

Ah, the 1990's. Makes me nostalgic for the days Monsanto could spray the endless fields of corn with thousands of tons of caustic pesticides and no one would say boo. 

When the Soviet Bloc collapsed, so did food production in Cuba. Tractors couldn't function without petroleum; crops couldn't thrive without fertilizer; insects took over entire fields. Cuba showed the worst growth in per capita food production in all of Latin America.

With no other choice but to adapt an urban agroecology, the Cuban government turned to its people. Oxen took over the plowing of fields; green crop manures like peas, oats, and clover replaced chemical fertilizers. Policy reforms helped farmers form co-ops and made it easier for small farmers to market their crops. The Ministry of Agriculture started making it easier for urban farmers to grow food on their lots and not only allowing farming on unused state lands but distributing those lands to potential urban farmers, to the tune of over 1 million hectares of land. In short, the government GAVE AWAY over 100,000 farms. Urban farming exploded, with close to 400,000 urban farms total, and production exploded: by 2006 peasant farmers owned 25% of the land and provided 65% of the food for the country. Using 72% less chemical fertilizers and pesticides than under the Soviet partnerships of 1988, Cuban farmers now produce 145% more vegetables, roots and tubers and 351% more beans.

Forced to survive without chemicals, isolated from genetically modified seeds, pushed to develop artisanal insecticides and sustainable ways to enrich the soil, Cuba handed the reins of the cart driving food production over to its people--and thrived. Using unused land and no chemicals, the people of Cuba produced 20kg of green material per square meter.

I have to stop and think about that in terms of my formerly grassy lawn. I probably produced one pound of grass clippings per square meter in a year, maybe, and that's with regular applications of chemical fertilizers and the huge can of Roundup spray we used to keep in the garage, not to mention the water usage that collectively has bankrupted California's water reservoirs.

With President Obama starting the process of lowering the trade embargo, American companies are eager to get into Cuba and start imposing our agricultural model: moving the bulk of food production into a few, large scale commercial farms that will turn a profit, and out of the hands of the small urban and suburban farmers. Export crops like sugarcane would likely again replace consumable food crops. And while the United States uses data from 2008, after three consecutive devastating hurricanes destroyed Cuban crops, to support the idea that Cuba cannot feed its people and therefore needs U.S. trade to survive? The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization lists Cuba's average per capita food production at well over 3,200 kcal.

Yesssss. But just think of all that lovely pristine farmland that could be put to...better use. 

Cuba's victory gardens inspire me that given sufficient time and rest from chemicals, with natural, sustainable amendments, my lawn and garden will continue to provide more and more of our food and gives me hope for what we urban and suburban farmers may be able to achieve. As the American urban farming movement grows, and with it the demand for local produce in our grocery stores and on our restaurant tables, we come closer to reaching what Cuban urban farming has already accomplished. If we think of Cuba at all, its to picture how quaintly backward they are, with their 1950's cars, trapped picturesquely in the ending of a Godfather movie, all jazz clubs and saxophones and sexy women in clinging dresses. It never occurred to me that in embracing the past, Cuba would have quietly developed a model for nation-wide sustainable organic agriculture that successfully feeds its people. Vintage never went out of style in Havana.