Healthy soil and sustainable growing

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Sustainable Agriculture - A Case Study
http://www.farmingsolutions.org/successtories/stories.asp?id=117


When trade collapsed with the socialist bloc in late 1989 and 1990, the
degree to which Cuba relied on monocrop agriculture proved to be a major
weakness for the country. Searching for the most efficient solution, the
Cuban government launched a national effort to convert the nation's
agricultural sector from high input agriculture to low input, self-reliant
farming practices on an unprecedented scale. By mid-1995 the food shortage
had been overcome, and the vast majority of the population no longer faced
drastic reductions of their basic food supply. In the 1996-97 growing
season Cuba recorded its highest-ever production levels for ten of the
thirteen basic food items in the Cuban diet. The Cuban experience
illustrates that we can feed a nation's population well with a small or
medium-sized farm model based on appropriate ecological technology, and in
doing so we can become more self-reliant in food production.

Summary
Our global food system is in the midst of a multifaceted crisis, with
ecological, economic, and social dimensions. To overcome that crisis,
political and social changes are needed to allow the widespread development
of alternatives.

The current food system is productive—there should be no doubt about
that—as per capita food produced in the world has increased by 15 percent
over the past thirty-five years. But as that production is in ever fewer
hands, and costs ever more in economic and ecological terms, it becomes
harder and harder to address the basic problems of hunger and food access
in the short term, let alone in a sustainable fashion. In the last twenty
years the number of hungry people in the world—excluding China—has
risen by 60 million (by contrast, in China the number of hungry people has
fallen dramatically).

Ecologically, there are impacts of industrial-style farming on groundwater
through pesticide and fertilizer runoff, on biodiversity through the spread
of monoculture and a narrowing genetic base, and on the very capacity of
agroecosystems to be productive into the future.

Economically, production costs rise as farmers are forced to use ever more
expensive machines and farm chemicals, while crop prices continue a
several-decade-long downward trend, causing a cost-price squeeze which has
led to the loss of untold tens of millions of farmers worldwide to
bankruptcies.

Socially, we have the concentration of farmland in fewer and fewer hands as
low crop prices make farming on a small scale unprofitable (despite higher
per acre total productivity of small farms), and agribusiness corporations
extend their control over more and more basic commodities.

Clearly the dominant corporate food system is not capable of adequately
addressing the needs of people or of the environment. Yet there are
substantial obstacles to the widespread adoption of alternatives. The
greatest obstacles are presented by political-corporate power and vested
interests, yet at times the psychological barrier to believing that the
alternatives can work seems almost as difficult to overcome. The
oft-repeated challenge is: "Could organic farming (or agroecology, local
production, small farms, farming without pesticides) ever really feed the
entire population of a country?" Recent Cuban history—the overcoming of a
food crisis through self-reliance, small farms and agroecological
technology—shows us that the alternatives can indeed feed a nation, and
thus provides a crucial case study for the ongoing debate.

A Brief History
Economic development in Cuba was molded by two external forces between the
1959 revolution and the 1989-90 collapse of trading relations with the
Soviet bloc. One was the U.S. trade embargo, part of an effort to isolate
the island economically and politically. The other was Cuba's entry into
the Soviet bloc's international trade alliance with relatively favorable
terms of trade.

The U.S. embargo essentially forced Cuba to turn to the Soviet bloc, while
the terms of trade offered by the latter opened the possibility of more
rapid development on the island than in the rest of Latin America and the
Caribbean.

Thus Cuba was able to achieve a more complete and rapid modernization than
most other developing countries. In the 1980s it ranked number one in the
region in the contribution of industry to its economy and it had a more
mechanized agricultural sector than any other Latin American country.

Nevertheless, some of the same contradictions that modernization produced
in other third world countries were apparent in Cuba, with Cuba's
development model proving ultimately to be of the dependent type.
Agriculture was defined by extensive monocrop production of export crops
and a heavy dependence on imported agrichemicals, hybrid seeds, machinery,
and petroleum. While industrialization was substantial by regional
standards, Cuban industry depended on many imported inputs.

The Cuban economy as a whole was thus characterized by the contradiction
between its relative modernity and its function in the Soviet bloc's
division of labor as a supplier of raw agricultural commodities and
minerals, and a net importer of both manufactured goods and foodstuffs. In
contrast to the situation faced by most third world countries, this
international division of labor actually brought significant benefits to
the Cuban people. Prior to the collapse of the socialist bloc, Cuba had
achieved high marks for per capita GNP, nutrition, life expectancy, and
women in higher education, and was ranked first in Latin America for the
availability of doctors, low infant mortality, housing, secondary school
enrollment, and attendance by the population at cultural events.

The Cuban achievements were made possible by a combination of the
government's commitment to social equity and the fact that Cuba received
far more favorable terms of trade for its exports than did the hemisphere's
other developing nations. During the 1980s Cuba received an average price
for its sugar exports to the Soviet Union that was 5.4 times higher than
the world price. Cuba also was able to obtain Soviet petroleum in return,
part of which was re-exported to earn convertible currency. Because of the
favorable terms of trade for sugar, its production far outweighed that of
food crops. About three times as much land was devoted to sugar in 1989 as
was used for food crops, contributing to a pattern of food dependency, with
as much as 57 percent of the total calories in the Cuban diet coming from
imports.

The revolutionary government had inherited an agricultural production
system strongly focused on export crops grown on highly concentrated land.
The first agrarian reform of 1959 converted most of the large cattle
ranches and sugarcane plantations into state farms.
Under the second agrarian reform in 1962, the state took control of 63
percent of all cultivated land.

Even before the revolution, individual peasant producers were a small part
of the agricultural scene. The rural economy was dominated by export
plantations, and the population as a whole was highly urbanized. That
pattern intensified in subsequent years, and by the late 1980s fully 69
percent of the island's population lived in urban areas. As late as 1994
some 80 percent of the nation's agricultural land consisted of large state
farms, which roughly correspond to the expropriated plantation holdings of
the pre-revolutionary era. Only 20 percent of the agricultural land was in
the hands of small farmers, split almost equally among individual holders
and cooperatives, yet this 20 percent produced more than 40 percent of
domestic food production. The state farm sector and a substantial portion
of the cooperatives were highly modernized, with large areas of monocrops
worked under heavy mechanization, fertilizer and pesticide use, and
large-scale irrigation. This style of farming, originally copied from the
advanced capitalist countries by the Soviet Union, was highly dependent on
imports of machinery, petroleum, and chemicals. When trade collapsed with
the socialist bloc, the degree to which Cuba relied on monocrop agriculture
proved to be a major weakness of the revolution.

Onset of the Crisis
When trade relations with the Soviet bloc crumbled in late 1989 and 1990,
the situation turned desperate. In 1991 the government declared the
"Special Period in Peacetime," which basically put the country on a wartime
economy style austerity program. There was an immediate 53 percent
reduction in oil imports that not only affected fuel availability for the
economy, but also reduced to zero the foreign exchange that Cuba had
formerly obtained via the re-export of petroleum. Imports of wheat and
other grains for human consumption dropped by more than 50 percent, while
other foodstuffs declined even more. Cuban agriculture was faced with a
drop of more than 80 percent in the availability of fertilizers and
pesticides, and more than 50 percent in fuel and other energy sources
produced by petroleum.

Suddenly, a country with an agricultural sector technologically similar to
California's found itself almost without chemical inputs, with sharply
reduced access to fuel and irrigation, and with a collapse in food imports.
In the early 1990s average daily caloric and protein intake by the Cuban
population may have been as much as 30 percent below levels in the 1980s.
Fortunately, Cuba was not totally unprepared to face the critical situation
that arose after 1989. It had, over the years, emphasized the development
of human resources, and therefore had a cadre of scientists and researchers
who could come forward with innovative ideas to confront the crisis. While
Cuba has only 2 percent of the population of Latin America, it has almost
11 percent of the scientists.

Alternative Technologies
In response to this crisis the Cuban government launched a national effort
to convert the nation's agricultural sector from high input agriculture to
low input, self-reliant farming practices on an unprecedented scale.

Because of the drastically reduced availability of chemical inputs, the
state hurried to replace them with locally produced, and in most cases
biological, substitutes. This has meant biopesticides (microbial products)
and natural enemies to combat insect pests, resistant plant varieties, crop
rotations and microbial antagonists to combat plant pathogens, and better
rotations, and cover cropping to suppress weeds. Synthetic fertilizers have
been replaced by biofertilizers, earthworms, compost, other organic
fertilizers, natural rock phosphate, animal and green manures, and the
integration of grazing animals. In place of tractors, for which fuel,
tires, and spare parts were largely unavailable, there has been a sweeping
return to animal traction.

Small Farmers Respond to the Crisis
When the collapse of trade and subsequent scarcity of inputs occurred in
1989-90, yields fell drastically throughout the country. The first problem
was that of producing without synthetic chemical inputs or tractors.

Gradually the national ox herd was built up to provide animal traction as a
substitute for tractors, and the production of biopesticides and
biofertilizers was rapidly stepped up.

Finally, a series of methods like vermicomposting (earthworm composting) of
residues and green manuring became widespread. But the impact of these
technological changes across sub-sectors of Cuban agriculture was highly
variable. The drop-off of yields in the state sector industrial-style farms
that average thousands of hectares has been resistant to recovery, with
production seriously stagnating well below pre-crisis levels for exports
crops. Yet the small farm or peasant sector (20 percent of farmed land)
responded rapidly by quickly boosting production above previous levels. How
can we explain the difference between the state- and small-farm sectors?
It really was not all that difficult for the small farm sector to
effectively produce with fewer inputs.

After all, today's small farmers are the descendants of generations of
small farmers, with long family and community traditions of low-input
production.

They basically did two things: remembered the old techniques—like
intercropping and manuring—that their parents and grandparents had used
before the advent of modern chemicals, and simultaneously incorporated new
biopesticides and biofertilizers into their production practices.

State Farms Incompatible with the Alternative Technologies
The problems of the state sector, on the other hand, were a combination of
low worker productivity, a problem pre-dating the Special Period, and the
complete inability of these immense and technified management units to
adapt to low-input technology.

With regard to the productivity problem, planners became aware several
years ago that the organization of work on state farms was profoundly
alienating in terms of the relationship between the agricultural worker and
the land. Large farms of thousands of hectares had their work forces
organized into teams that would prepare the soil in one area, move on to
plant another, weed still another, and later harvest an altogether
different area. Almost never would the same person both plant and harvest
the same area. Thus no one ever had to confront the consequences of doing
something badly or, conversely, enjoy the fruits of his or her own labor.

In an effort to create a more intimate relationship between farm workers
and the land, and to tie financial incentives to productivity, the
government began several years ago to experiment with a program called
"linking people with the land."

This system made small work teams directly responsible for all aspects of
production in a given parcel of land, allowing remuneration to be directly
linked to productivity. The new system was tried before the Special Period
on a number of state farms, and rapidly led to enormous increases in
production. Nevertheless it was not widely implemented at the time.

In terms of technology, scale effects are very different for conventional
chemical management and for low external input alternatives. Under
conventional systems, a single technician can manage several thousand
hectares on a "recipe" basis by simply writing out instructions for a
particular fertilizer formula or pesticide to be applied with machinery on
the entire area. Not so for agroecological farming. Whoever manages the
farm must be intimately familiar with the ecological heterogeneity of each
individual patch of soil. The farmer must know, for example, where organic
matter needs to be added, and where pest and natural enemy refuges and
entry points are. This partially explains the inability of the state sector
to raise yields with alternative inputs. Like the productivity issue, it
can only be effectively addressed through a re-linking of people with the
land.

By mid-1993, the state was faced with a complex reality. Imported inputs
were largely unavailable, but nevertheless the small farmer sector had
effectively adapted to low input production (although a secondary problem
was acute in this sector, namely diversion of produce to the black market).
The state sector, on the other hand, was proving itself to be an
ineffective "white elephant" in the new historical conjuncture, incapable
of adjusting.

The earlier success of the experimental "linking" program, however, and the
success of the peasant sector, suggested a way out. In September 1993 Cuba
began radically reorganizing its production in order to create the
small-scale management units that are essential for effective organic-style
farming. This reorganization has centered on the privatization and
cooperativization of the unwieldy state sector.

The process of linking people with the land thus culminated in 1993, when
the Cuban government issued a decree terminating the existence of state
farms, turning them into Basic Units of Cooperative Production (UBPCs), a
form of worker-owned enterprise or cooperative. The 80 percent of all
farmland that was once held by the state, including sugarcane plantations,
has now essentially been turned over to the workers.

The UBPCs allow collectives of workers to lease state farmlands rent free,
in perpetuity. Members elect management teams that determine the division
of jobs, what crops will be planted on which parcels, and how much credit
will be taken out to pay for the purchase of inputs. Property rights remain
in the hands of the state, and the UBPCs must still meet production quotas
for their key crops, but the collectives are owners of what they produce.
Perhaps most importantly, what they produce in excess of their quotas can
now be freely sold on the newly reopened farmers markets. This last reform,
made in 1994, offered a price incentive to farmers both to sell their
produce through legal channels rather than the black market, and also to
make effective use of the new technologies.

The pace of consolidation of the UBPCs has varied greatly in their first
years of life. Today one can find a range from those where the only change
is that the old manager is now an employee of the workers, to those that
truly function as collectives, to some in which the workers are parceling
the farms into small plots worked by groups of friends. In almost all
cases, the effective size of the management unit has been drastically
reduced. It is still too early to tell toward what final variety of
structures the UBPCs will evolve. But it is clear that the process of
turning previously alienated farm workers into farmers will take some
time—it simply cannot be accomplished overnight—and many UBPCs are
struggling. Incentives are a nagging problem. Most UBPCs are stuck with
state production contracts for export crops like sugar and citrus.

These still have fixed, low prices paid by state marketing agencies, in
contrast to the much higher prices that can be earned for food crops.
Typical UBPCs, not surprisingly then, have low yields in their export
crops, but also have lucrative side businesses selling food produced on
spare land or between the rows of their citrus or sugarcane.

Food Shortage Overcome
By mid-1995 the food shortage had been overcome, and the vast majority of
the population no longer faced drastic reductions of their basic food
supply.

In the 1996-97 growing season Cuba recorded its highest-ever production
levels for ten of the thirteen basic food items in the Cuban diet. The
production increases came primarily from small farms, and in the case of
eggs and pork, from booming backyard production. The proliferation of urban
farmers who produce fresh produce has also been extremely important to the
Cuban food supply. The earlier food shortages and the rise in food prices
suddenly turned urban agriculture into a very profitable activity for
Cubans, and once the government threw its full support behind a nascent
urban gardening movement, it exploded to near epic proportions.

Formerly vacant lots and backyards in all Cuban cities now sport food crops
and farm animals, and fresh produce is soldfrom private stands throughout
urban areas at prices substantially below those prevailing in the farmers
markets. There can be no doubt that urban farming, relying almost
exclusively on organic techniques, has played a key role in assuring the
food security of Cuban families over the past two to three years.

An Alternative Paradigm?
To what extent can we see the outlines of an alternative food system
paradigm in this Cuban experience? Or is Cuba just such a unique case in
every way that we cannot generalize its experiences into lessons for other
countries?

The first thing to point out is that contemporary Cuba turned conventional
wisdom completely on its head. We are told that small countries cannot feed
themselves, that they need imports to cover the deficiency of their local
agriculture. Yet Cuba has taken enormous strides toward self-reliance since
it lost its key trade relations.

We hear that a country can't feed its people without synthetic farm
chemicals, yet Cuba is virtually doing so. We are told that we need the
efficiency of large-scale corporate or state farms in order to produce
enough food, yet we find small farmers and gardeners in the vanguard of
Cuba's recovery from a food crisis. In fact, in the absence of subsidized
machines and imported chemicals, small farms are more efficient than very
large production units. We hear time and again that international food aid
is the answer to food shortages—yet Cuba has found an alternative in
local production.

Abstracting from that experience, the elements of an alternative paradigm
might therefore be:
· Agroecological technology instead of chemicals: Cuba has used
intercropping, locally produced biopesticdes, compost, and other
alternatives to synthetic pesticides and fertilizers.

· Fair Prices for Farmers: Cuban farmers stepped up production in
response to higher crop prices. Farmers everywhere lack incentive to
produce when prices are kept artificially low, as they often are. Yet when
given an incentive, they produce, regardless of the conditions under which
that production must take place.

· Redistribution of Land: Small farmers and gardeners have been the most
productive of Cuban producers under low-input conditions. Indeed, smaller
farms worldwide produce much more per unit area than do large farms. In
Cuba redistribution was relatively easy to accomplish because the major
part of the land reform had already occurred, in the sense that there were
no landlords to resist further change.

· Greater Emphasis on Local Production: People should not have to depend
on the vagaries of prices in the world economy, long distance
transportation, and super power "goodwill" for their next meal. Locally and
regionally produced food offers greater security, as well as synergistic
linkages to promote local economic development. Furthermore such production
is more ecologically sound, as the energy spent on international transport
is wasteful and environmentally unsustainable. By promoting urban farming,
cities and their surrounding areas can be made virtually self-sufficient in
perishable foods, be beautified, and have greater employment opportunities.
Cuba gives us a hint of the underexploited potential of urban farming.

Cuba in its Special Period has clearly been in a unique situation with
respect to not being able to use power machinery in the fields, forcing
them to seek alternatives such as animal traction. It is unlikely that
either Cuba or any other country at its stage of development would choose
to abandon machine agriculture to this extent unless compelled to do so.
Yet there are important lessons here for countries struggling to develop.

Relatively small-scale farming, even using animals for traction, can be
very productive per unit of land, given technical support. And it is next
to impossible to have ecologically sound farming at an extremely large
scale.

Although it is undeniable that for countries wishing to develop industry
and at the same time grow most of their own food, some mechanization of
agriculture will be needed, it is crucial to recognize—and the Cuban
example can help us to understand this–that modest-sized family farms and
cooperatives that use reasonably sized equipment can follow ecologically
sound practices and have increased labor productivity.

The Cuban experience illustrates that we can feed a nation's population
well with a small- or medium-sized farm model based on appropriate
ecological technology, and in doing so we can become more self-reliant in
food production. Farmers must receive higher returns for their produce, and
when they do they will be encouraged to produce. Capital intensive chemical
inputs—most of which are unnecessary—be largely dispensed with. The
important lessons from Cuba that we can apply elsewhere, then, are
agroecology, fair prices, land reform, and local production, including
urban agriculture.


Source: Peter M. Rosset is co-director of Food First/The Institute for Food
and Development Policy . He has a Ph.D. in agricultural ecology and teaches
at Stanford University.

For more information on Cuban agriculture, see Peter Rosset's new book,
'Sustainable Agriculture and Resistance: Transforming Cuban Food
production,' at http://www.foodfirst.org/cuba/

Food First/Institute for Food and Development Policy
398 60th Street, Oakland, CA 94608 USA
Tel: 510-654-4400 Fax: 510-654-4551
foodfirst@foodfirst.org
http://www.foodfirst.org