Cuba's second revolution.

• Author: Raap, Will
• Position: Shaking Off El Norte

For several years I have been hearing about another revolution in Cuba. This time it involved farming and the food system. For much of the 1990s, small organic farms were providing increasing amounts of Cuba's food. They were responding to the economic emergency of 1989-90 when the Soviet bloc began collapsing and Cuba lost its main source of foreign exchange and half of the food its 11 million citizens relied on.

During the early 1990s imports of agricultural machinery, fertilizer, pesticides and other needed inputs for Cuba's industrialized agricultural system (producing mostly sugar for export) stopped abruptly. Cuban agriculture had to change or the people would starve. And change needed to happen fast.

Fertilizers, pesticides, equipment and other farm inputs needed to come from local sources and harvests had to feed Cubans, not sweeten desserts in East Germany. It was like corporate farms in California or Iowa suddenly having to switch from chemically dependent monocultures feeding Manhattan to compost-fed, diversified crops feeding Fresno or Dubuque. Then, in 1999, I read an article in The New Internationalist about a surprising additional innovation in this latest Cuban revolution: Organiponicos.

Organiponicos 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...