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  • From: "TradingPostPaul" <tradingpost@riseup.net>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] Grupo de Agricultura Orgánica, GAO (Cuba)
  • Date: Wed, 28 Nov 2007 18:47:39 -0700


Grupo de Agricultura Orgánica, GAO (Cuba)
(1999) recipient of the Right Livelihood Award
Fernando Funes & Maria del
Carmen Pérez
http://www.rightlivelihood.org/gao.html
”…for showing that organic agriculture is a key to both environmental
sustainability and food security.”

GAO was founded in 1993 as the Asociación Cubana de Agricultura
Orgánica (ACAO) at a time when the country was facing its most serious
food crisis since the revolution. The collapse of the Soviet Union, and the
loss of its economic support, meant that hunger was threatening and the
government had to find alternative, self-reliant means of boosting farm
output. With only a fraction of the agrochemicals previously used still
available, these alternatives were necessarily organic or semi-organic.
However, the generally prevailing view was that these measures were a
stop-gap and that things would return to 'normal' when fertiliser and
pesticide imports could be resumed. The primary goal of ACAO, in contrast,
was both to demonstrate that organic farming systems can be superior to the
high-input, capital-intensive kind in all important respects, and to
persuade policy-makers, scientists and farmers that there should be no
going back.

Within four years the membership of ACAO spanned the whole agricultural
sector, from farmers and farm managers to extension agents, researchers,
professors and government officials. In addition to its base in Havana,
ACAO now has local chapters in most provinces and each member is active in
his or her own workspace. They make it their job to educate others about
organic technologies and to promote the idea that the current use of
organic methods should be considered a permanent transformation of Cuban
agriculture.

As part of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)'s
'Agroecological Lighthouse' programme, ACAO created a number of exemplary
farms, serving as a demonstration to other farmers, policy makers, etc., of
what is possible. It has held dozens of workshops around the country,
produces its own magazine with a good mix of general and technical
articles, and has created an accredited agroecology course at the
Agricultural University of Havana with more than 500 students enrolled. A
network of 10 regional documentation centres has also been established. In
addition, ACAO has held three international conferences on organic farming,
hosted numerous delegations from around the world and helped to develop a
master's Degree in Sustainable Development at the University of Havana. An
evaluation of the Lighthouse Programme concludes that its main benefits
have been to show that agroecological production can produce similar and
sometimes superior yields to conventional methods, as well as other
economic benefits and improved soil fertility. The importance of ACAO's
work lies in that it has both proved the economic advantage of organic
agriculture and legitimised this approach with policymakers, helping
farmers obtain new technologies, transforming educational curricula and
research programmes, and pushing for institutionalisation of the
alternative model.

In 1999 ACAO achieved formal recognition by the Cuban Government and became
the Grupo de Agricultura Orgánica (GAO) within the Cuban Association of
Agricultural and Forest Technicians (ACTAF), an institutional change which
gives it more freedom of action and influence with the Cuban Government.
GAO is publishing a book Transforming the Cuban Countryside: Advances in
Sustainable Agriculture.






  • [Livingontheland] Grupo de Agricultura Orgánica, GAO (Cuba), TradingPostPaul, 11/28/2007

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