2019/01/20

12 The Paradox of Cuban Agriculture

Monthly Review | The Paradox of Cuban Agriculture



The Paradox of Cuban Agriculture

Miguel A. Altieri (agroeco3 [at] berkeley.edu) is Profesor of Agroecology at the University of California, Berkeley and President of the Latin American Scientific Society of Agroecology (SOCLA). He is the author of more than 250 journal articles and twelve books. Fernando R. Funes-Monzote (mgahonam [at] enet.cu) is currently a researcher at the Experimental Station Indio Hatuey, University of Matanzas, Cuba. He is one of the founding members of the Cuban Association of Organic Agriculture.
When Cuba faced the shock of lost trade relations with the Soviet Bloc in the early 1990s, food production initially collapsed due to the loss of imported fertilizers, pesticides, tractors, parts, and petroleum. The situation was so bad that Cuba posted the worst growth in per capita food production in all of Latin America and the Caribbean. But the island rapidly re-oriented its agriculture to depend less on imported synthetic chemical inputs, and became a world-class case of ecological agriculture.1 This was such a successful turnaround that Cuba rebounded to show the best food production performance in Latin America and the Caribbean over the following period, a remarkable annual growth rate of 4.2 percent per capita from 1996 through 2005, a period in which the regional average was 0 percent.2
Much of the production rebound was due to the adoption since the early 1990s of a range of agrarian decentralization policies that encouraged forms of production, both individual as well as cooperative—Basic Units of Cooperative Production (UBPC) and Credit and Service Cooperatives (CCS). Moreover, recently the Ministry of Agriculture announced the dismantling of all “inefficient State companies” as well as support for creating 2,600 new small urban and suburban farms, and the distribution of the use rights (in usufruct) to the majority of estimated 3 million hectares of unused State lands. Under these regulations, decisions on resource use and strategies for food production and commercialization will be made at the municipal level, while the central government and state companies will support farmers by distributing necessary inputs and services.3 Through the mid-1990s some 78,000 farms were given in usufruct to individuals and legal entities. More than 100,000 farms have now been distributed, covering more than 1 million hectares in total. These new farmers are associated with the CCS following the campesinoproduction model. The government is busy figuring out how to accelerate the processing of an unprecedented number of land requests.4
The land redistribution program has been supported by solid research- extension systems that have played key roles in the expansion of organic and urban agriculture and the massive artisanal production and deployment of biological inputs for soil and pest management. The opening of local agricultural markets and the existence of strong grassroots organisations supporting farmers—for example, the National Association of Small Scale Farmers (ANAP, Asociación Nacional de Agricultores Pequeños), the Cuban Association of Animal Production (ACPA, Asociación Cubana de Producción Animal), and the Cuban Association of Agricultural and Forestry Technicians (ACTAF, Asociación Cubana de Técnicos Agrícolas y Forestales)—also contributed to this achievement.
But perhaps the most important changes that led to the recovery of food sovereignty in Cuba occurred in the peasant sector which in 2006, controlling only 25 percent of the agricultural land, produced over 65 percent of the country’s food.5 Most peasants belong to the ANAP and almost all of them belong to cooperatives. The production of vegetables typically produced by peasants fell drastically between 1988 to 1994, but by 2007 had rebounded to well over 1988 levels (see Table 1). This production increase came despite using 72 percent fewer agricultural chemicals in 2007 than in 1988. Similar patterns can be seen for other peasant crops like beans, roots, and tubers.
Cuba’s achievements in urban agriculture are truly remarkable—there are 383,000 urban farms, covering 50,000 hectares of otherwise unused land and producing more than 1.5 million tons of vegetables with top urban farms reaching a yield of 20 kg/mper year of edible plant material using no synthetic chemicals—equivalent to a hundred tons per hectare. Urban farms supply 70 percent or more of all the fresh vegetables consumed in cities such as Havana and Villa Clara.

Table 1. Changes in Crop Production and Agrochemical Use

Crop
Percent production change
Percent change in agrochemical use
1988 to 1994
1988 to 2007
1988 to 2007
General vegetables
-65
+145
-72
Beans
-77
+351
-55
Roots and tubers
-42
+145
-85
Source: Peter Rosset, Braulio Machín-Sosa, Adilén M. Roque-Jaime, and Dana R. Avila-Lozano, “The Campesino-to-Campesino Agroecology Movement of ANAP in Cuba,” Journal of Peasant Studies 38 (2011): 161-91.
All over the world, and especially in Latin America, the island’s agroecological production levels and the associated research efforts along with innovative farmer organizational schemes have been observed with great interest. No other country in the world has achieved this level of success with a form of agriculture that uses the ecological services of biodiversity and reduces food miles, energy use, and effectively closes local production and consumption cycles. However, some people talk about the “Cuban agriculture paradox”: if agroecological advances in the country are so great, why does Cuba still import substantial amounts of food? If effective biological control methods are widely available and used, why is the government releasing transgenic plants such as Bt crops that produce their own pesticide using genes derived from bacteria?
An article written by Dennis Avery from the Center for Global Food Issues at the Hudson Institute, “Cubans Starve on Diet of Lies,” helped fuel the debate around the paradox. He stated:
The Cubans told the world they had heroically learned to feed themselves without fuel or farm chemicals after their Soviet subsidies collapsed in the early 1990s. They bragged about their “peasant cooperatives,” their biopesticides and organic fertilizers. They heralded their earthworm culture and the predator wasps they unleashed on destructive caterpillars. They boasted about the heroic ox teams they had trained to replace tractors. Organic activists all over the world swooned. Now, a senior Ministry of Agriculture official has admitted in the Cuban press that 84 percent of Cuba’s current food consumption is imported, according to our agricultural attaché in Havana. The organic success was all a lie.6
Avery has used this misinformation to promote a campaign discrediting authors who studied and informed about the heroic achievements of Cuban people in the agricultural field: he has accused these scientists of being communist liars.

The Truth About Food Imports in Cuba

Avery referred to statements of Magalys Calvo, then Vice Minister of the Economy and Planning Ministry, who said in February 2007 that 84 percent of items “in the basic food basket” at that time were imported. However, these percentages represent only the food that is distributed through regulated government channels by means of a ration card. Overall data show that Cuba’s food import dependency has been dropping for decades, despite brief upturns due to natural and human-made disasters. The best time series available on Cuban food import dependency (see Chart 1) shows that it actually declined between 1980 and 1997, aside from a spike in the early 1990s, when trade relations with the former Socialist Bloc collapsed.7

Chart 1. Cuba Food Import Dependency, 1980–1997

Chart 1. Cuba Food Import Dependency, 1980–1997
Source: José Alvarez, The Issue of Food Security in Cuba, University of Florida Extension Report FE483, downloaded July 20, 2011 from http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/pdffiles/FE/FE48300.pdf.
However, Chart 2 indicates a much more nuanced view of Cuba’s agricultural strengths and weaknesses after more than a decade of technological bias toward ecological farming techniques. Great successes have clearly been achieved in root crops (a staple of the Cuban diet), sugar and other sweeteners, vegetables, fruits, eggs, and seafood. Meat is an intermediate case, while large amounts of cooking oil, cereals, and legumes (principally rice and wheat for human consumption, and corn and soybeans for livestock) continue to be imported. The same is true for powdered milk, which does not appear on the graph. Total import dependency, however, is a mere 16 percent—ironically the exact inverse of the 84 percent figure cited by Avery. It is also important to mention that twenty-three other countries in the Latin American-Caribbean region are also net food importers.8

Chart 2. Import Dependence For Selected Foods, 2003

Chart 2. Import Dependence For Selected Foods, 2003
Source: Calculated from FAO Commodity Balances, Cuba, 2003, http://faostat.fao.org.
There is considerable debate concerning current food dependency in Cuba. Dependency rose in the 2000s as imports from the United States grew and hurricanes devastated its agriculture. After being hit by three especially destructive hurricanes in 2008, Cuba satisfied national needs by importing 55 percent of its total food, equivalent to approximately $2.8 billion. However, as the world food price crisis drives prices higher, the government has reemphasized food self-sufficiency. Regardless of whether food has been imported or produced within the country, it is important to recognize that Cuba has been generally able to adequately feed its people. According to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), Cuba’s average daily per capita dietary energy supply in 2007 (the last year available) was over 3,200 kcal, the highest of all Latin American and Caribbean nations.9

Different Models: Agroecology versus Industrial Agriculture

Under this new scenario the importance of contributions of ANAP peasants to reducing food imports should become strategic, but is it? Despite the indisputable advances of sustainable agriculture in Cuba and evidence of the effectiveness of alternatives to the monoculture model, interest persists among some leaders in high external input systems with sophisticated and expensive technological packages. With the pretext of “guaranteeing food security and reducing food imports,” these specific programs pursue “maximization” of crop and livestock production and insist on going back to monoculture methods—and therefore dependent on synthetic chemical inputs, large scale machinery, and irrigation—despite proven energy inefficiency and technological fragility. In fact, many resources are provided by international cooperation (i.e., from Venezuela) dedicated to “protect or boost agricultural areas” where a more intensive agriculture is practiced for crops like potatoes, rice, soybean, and vegetables. These “protected” areas for large-scale, industrial-style agricultural production represent less than 10 percent of the cultivated land. Millions of dollars are invested in pivot irrigation systems, machinery, and other industrial agricultural technologies: a seductive model which increases short-term production but generates high long-term environmental and socioeconomic costs, while replicating a model that failed even before 1990.
Last year it was announced that the pesticide enterprise “Juan Rodríguez Gómez” in the municipality of Artemisa, Havana, will produce some 100,000 liters of the herbicide glyphosate in 2011.10 In early 2011 a Cuban TV News program informed the population about the Cubasoy project. The program, “Bienvenida la Soya,” reported that “it is possible to transform lands that over years were covered by marabú [a thorny invasive leguminous tree] with soybean monoculture in the south of the Ciego de Ávila province.” Supported by Brazilian credits and technology, the project covers more than 15,000 hectares of soybean grown in rotation with maize and aims at reaching 40,500 hectares in 2013, with a total of 544 center pivot irrigation systems installed by 2014. Soybean yields rank between 1.2 tons per hectare (1,100 lbs per acre) under rainfed conditions and up to 1.97 tons per hectare (1,700 lbs per acre) under irrigation. It is not clear if the soybean varieties used are transgenic, but the maize variety is the Cuban transgenic FR-Bt1. Ninety percent of machinery is imported from Brazil—“large tractors, direct seeding machines, and equipment for crop protection”—and considerable infrastructure investments have been made for irrigation, roads, technical support, processing, and transport.

The Debate Over Transgenic Crops

Cuba has invested millions in biotechnological research and development for agriculture through its Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (CIGB) and a network of institutions across the country. Cuban biotechnology is free from corporate control and intellectual property-right regimes that exist in other countries. Cuban biotechnologists affirm that their biosafety system sets strict biological and environmental security norms. Given this autonomy and advantages biotechnological innovations could efficiently be applied to solve problems such as viral crop diseases or drought tolerance for which agroecological solutions are not yet available. In 2009 the CIGB planted in Yagüajay, Sancti Spiritus, three hectares of genetically modified corn (transgenic corn FR-Bt1) on an experimental basis. This variety is supposed to suppress populations of the damaging larval stage of the “palomilla del maíz” moth (Spodoptera frugiperda, also known as the fall armyworm). By 2009 a total of 6,000 hectares were planted with the transgenic (also referred to as genetically modified, or GM) variety across several provinces. From an agroecological perspective it is perplexing that the first transgenic variety to be tested in Cuba is Bt corn, given that in the island there are so many biological control alternatives to regulate lepidopteran pests. The diversity of local maize varieties include some that exhibit moderate-to-high levels of pest resistance, offering significant opportunities to increase yields with conventional plant breeding and known agroecological management strategies. Many centers for multiplication of insect parasites and pathogens (CREEs, Centros de Reproducción de Entomófagos y Entomopatógenos) produce Bacillus thuringiensis (a microbial insecticide) and Trichogramma (small wasps), both highly effective against moths such as the palomilla. In addition, mixing corn with other crops such as beans or sweet potatoes in polycultures produces significantly less pest attack than maize grown in monocultures. This also increases the land equivalent ratio (growing more total crops in a given area of land) and protects the soil.
When transgenic Bt maize was planted in 2008 as a test crop, researchers and farmers from the agroecological movement expressed concern. Several people warned that the release of transgenic crops endangered agrobiodiversity and contradicted the government’s own agricultural production plans by diverting the focus from agroecological farming that had been strategically adopted as a policy in Cuba. Others felt that biotechnology was geared towards the interests of the multinational corporations and the market. Taking into account its potential environmental and public health risks, it would be better for Cuba to continue emphasizing agroecological alternatives that have proven to be safe and have allowed the country to produce food under difficult economic and climatic circumstances.
The main demonstrated advantage of GM crops has been to simplify the farming process, allowing farmers to work more land. GM crops that resist herbicides (such as “Roundup Ready” corn and soybeans) and that produce their own insecticide (such as Bt corn) generally do not yield any more than comparable non-GM crops. However, using these GM crops along with higher levels of mechanization (especially larger tractors) have now made it possible for the size of a family corn and soybean farm in the U.S. Midwest to increase from around 240 hectares (600 acres) to around 800 hectares (2,000 acres).
In September 2010 a meeting of experts concerned about transgenic crops was convened with board and staff members from the National Center for Biological Security and the Office for Environmental Regulation and Nuclear Security (Centro Nacional de Seguridad Biológica and the Oficina de Regulación Ambiental y Seguridad Nuclear), institutions entrusted with licensing GM crops. The experts issued a statement calling for a moratorium on GM crops until more information was available and society has a chance to debate the environmental and health effects of the technology. However, until now there has been no response to this request. One positive outcome of the year-long debate on the inconsistency of planting FR-Bt1 transgenic corn in Cuba was the open recognition by the authorities of the potential devastating consequences of GM crops for the small farmer sector. Although it appears that the use of transgenic corn will be limited exclusively to the areas of Cubasoy and other conventional areas under strict supervision, this effort is highly questionable.11

The Paradox’s Outcome—What Does the Future Hold?

The instability in international markets and the increase in food prices in a country somewhat dependent on food imports threatens national sovereignty. This reality has prompted high officials to make declarations emphasizing the need to prioritize food production based on locally available resources.12 It is in fact paradoxical that, to achieve food security in a period of economic growth, most of the resources are dedicated to importing foods or promoting industrial agriculture schemes instead of stimulating local production by peasants. There is a cyclical return to support conventional agriculture by policy makers when the financial situation improves, while sustainable approaches and agroecology, considered as “alternatives,” are only supported under scenarios of economic scarcity. This cyclical mindset strongly undermines the advances achieved with agroecology and organic farming since the economic collapse in 1990.
Cuban agriculture currently experiences two extreme food-production models: an intensive model with high inputs, and another, beginning at the onset of the special period, oriented towards agroecology and based on low inputs. The experience accumulated from agroecological initiatives in thousands of small-and-medium scale farms constitutes a valuable starting point in the definition of national policies to support sustainable agriculture, thus rupturing with a monoculture model prevalent for almost four hundred years. In addition to Cuba being the only country in the world that was able to recover its food production by adopting agroecological approaches under extreme economic difficulties, the island exhibits several characteristics that serve as fundamental pillars to scale up agroecology to unprecedented levels:
Cuba represents 2 percent of the Latin American population but has 11 percent of the scientists in the region. There are about 140,000 high-level professionals and medium-level technicians, dozens of research centres, agrarian universities and their networks, government institutions such as the Ministry of Agriculture, scientific organizations supporting farmers (i.e. ACTAF), and farmers organizations such as ANAP.
Cuba has sufficient land to produce enough food with agroecological methods to satisfy the nutritional needs of its eleven million inhabitants.13 Despite soil erosion, deforestation, and loss of biodiversity during the past fifty years—as well as during the previous four centuries of extractive agriculture—the country’s conditions remain exceptionally favorable for agriculture. Cuba has six million hectares of fairly level land and another million gently sloping hectares that can be used for cropping. More than half of this land remains uncultivated, and the productivity of both land and labor, as well as the efficiency of resource use, in the rest of this farm area are still low. If all the peasant farms (controlling 25 percent of land) and all the UBPC (controlling 42 percent of land) adopted diversified agroecological designs, Cuba would be able to produce enough to feed its population, supply food to the tourist industry, and even export some food to help generate foreign currency. All this production would be supplemented with urban agriculture, which is already reaching significant levels of production.
About one third of all peasant families, some 110,000 families, have joined ANAP within its Farmer to Farmer Agroecological Movement (MACAC, Movimiento Agroecológico Campesino a Campesino). It uses participatory methods based on local peasant needs and allows for the socialization of the rich pool of family and community agricultural knowledge that is linked to their specific historical conditions and identities. By exchanging innovations among themselves, peasants have been able to make dramatic strides in food production relative to the conventional sector, while preserving agrobiodiversity and using much lower amounts of agrochemicals.
Observations of agricultural performance after extreme climatic events in the last two decades have revealed the resiliency of peasant farms to climate disasters. Forty days after Hurricane Ike hit Cuba in 2008, researchers conducted a farm survey in the provinces of Holguin and Las Tunas and found that diversified farms exhibited losses of 50 percent compared to 90 to 100 percent in neighboring farms growing monocultures. Likewise agroecologically managed farms showed a faster productive recovery (80 to 90 percent forty days after the hurricane) than monoculture farms.14 These evaluations emphasize the importance of enhancing plant diversity and complexity in farming systems to reduce vulnerability to extreme climatic events, a strategy entrenched among Cuban peasants.
Most of the production efforts have been oriented towards reaching food sovereignty, defined as the right of everyone to have access to safe, nutritious, and culturally appropriate food in sufficient quantity and quality to sustain a healthy life with full human dignity. However, given the expected increase in the cost of fuel and inputs, the Cuban agroecological strategy also aims at enhancing two other types of sovereignties. Energy sovereignty is the right for all people to have access to sufficient energy within ecological limits from appropriate sustainable sources for a dignified life. Technological sovereignty refers to the capacity to achieve food and energy sovereignty by nurturing the environmental services derived from existing agrobiodiversity and using locally available resources.
Elements of the three sovereignties—food, energy, and technology—can be found in hundreds of small farms, where farmers are producing 70–100 percent of the necessary food for their family consumption while producing surpluses sold to the market, allowing them to obtain income (for example, Finca del Medio, CCS Reinerio Reina in Sancti Spiritus; Plácido farm, CCS José Machado; Cayo Piedra, in Matanzas, belonging to CCS José Martí; and San José farm, CCS Dionisio San Román in Cienfuegos). These levels of productivity are obtained using local technologies such as worm composting and reproduction of beneficial native microorganisms together with diversified production systems such as polycultures, rotations, animal integration into crop farms, and agroforestry. Many farmers are also using integrated food/energy systems and generate their own sources of energy using human and animal labor, biogas, and windmills, in addition to producing biofuel crops such as jatrophaintercropped with cassava.15

Conclusions

A rich knowledge of agroecology science and practice exists in Cuba, the result of accumulated experiences promoted by researchers, professors, technicians, and farmers supported by ACTAF, ACPA, and ANAP. This legacy is based on the experiences within rural communities that contain successful “agroecological lighthouses” from which principles have radiated out to help build the basis of an agricultural strategy that promotes efficiency, diversity, synergy, and resiliency. By capitalizing on the potential of agroecology, Cuba has been able to reach high levels of production using low amounts of energy and external inputs, with returns to investment on research several times higher than those derived from industrial and biotechnological approaches that require major equipment, fuel, and sophisticated laboratories.
The political will expressed in the writings and discourses of high officials about the need to prioritize agricultural self-sufficiency must translate into concrete support for the promotion of productive and energy-efficient initiatives in order to reach the three sovereignties at the local (municipal) level, a fundamental requirement to sustain a planet in crisis.
By creating more opportunities for strategic alliances between ANAP, ACPA, ACTAF, and research centers, many pilot projects could be launched in key municipalities, testing different agroecological technologies that promote the three sovereignties, as adapted to each region’s special environmental and socioeconomic conditions. These initiatives should adopt the farmer-to-farmer methodology that transcends top-down research and extension paradigms, allowing farmers and researchers to learn and innovate collectively. The integration of university professors and students in such experimentation and evaluation processes would enhance scientific knowledge for the conversion to an ecologically based agriculture. It would also help improve agroecological theory, which would in turn benefit the training of future generations of professionals, technicians, and farmers.
The agroecological movement constantly urges those Cuban policy makers with a conventional, Green Revolution, industrial farming mindset to consider the reality of a small island nation facing an embargo and potentially devastating hurricanes. Given these realities, embracing agroecological approaches and methods throughout the country’s agriculture can help Cuba achieve food sovereignty while maintaining its political autonomy.

Notes

  1.  Peter Rosset and Medea Benjamin, eds., The Greening of the Revolution (Ocean Press: Melbourne, Australia, 1994); Fernando Funes, et. al., eds., Sustainable Agriculture and Resistance (Oakland: Food First Books, 2002); Braulio Machín-Sosa, et. al., Revolución Agroecológica (ANAP: La Habana, 2010).
  2.  Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), The State of Food and Agriculture 2006(Rome: FAO, 2006), http://fao.org.
  3.  MINAG (Ministerio de la Agricultura), Informe del Ministerio de la Agricultura a la Comisión Agroalimentaria de la Asamblea Nacional, May 14, 2008 (MINAG: Havana, Cuba, 2008).
  4.  Ana Margarita González, “Tenemos que dar saltos cualitativos,” Interview with Orlando Lugo Fonte, Trabajadores, June 22, 2009, 6.
  5.  Raisa Pagés, “Necesarios cambios en relaciones con el sector cooperativo-campesino,” Granma, December 18, 2006, 3.
  6.  Dennis T. Avery, “Cubans Starve on Diet of Lies,” April 2, 2009, http://cgfi.org.
  7.  Fernando Funes, Miguel A. Altieri, and Peter Rosset, “The Avery Diet: The Hudson’s Institute Misinformation Campaign Against Cuban Agriculture,” May 2009, http://globalalternatives.org.
  8.  FAO, Ibid.
  9.  FAOSTAT Food Supply Database, http://faostat.fao.org, accessed July 28, 2011.
  10.  René Montalván, “Plaguicidas de factura nacional,” El Habanero, November 23, 2010, 4.
  11.  Fernando Funes-Monzote and Eduardo F. Freyre Roach, eds., Transgénicos ¿Qué se gana? ¿Qué se pierde? Textos para un debate en Cuba (Havana: Publicaciones Acuario, 2009), http://landaction.org.
  12.  Raúl Castro, “Mientras mayores sean las dificultades, más exigencia, disciplina y unidad se requieren,” Granma, February 25, 2008, 4–6.
  13.  Fernando Funes-Monzote, Farming Like We’re Here to Stay, PhD dissertation, Wageningen University, Netherlands, 2008.
  14.  Braulio Machin-Sosa, et. al., Revolución Agroecológica: el Movimiento de Campesino a Campesino de la ANAP en Cuba (ANAP: La Habana, 2010).
  15.  Fernando Funes-Monzote, et. al., “Evaluación inicial de sistemas integrados para la producción de alimentos y energía en Cuba,” Pastos y Forrajes (forthcoming, 2011).



The Naturally Bug-Free Garden: Controlling Pest Insects Without Chemicals (Permaculture Gardener Book 2) - Kindle edition by Anna Hess. Crafts, Hobbies & Home Kindle eBooks @ Amazon.com.



The Naturally Bug-Free Garden: Controlling Pest Insects Without Chemicals (Permaculture Gardener Book 2) - Kindle edition by Anna Hess. Crafts, Hobbies & Home Kindle eBooks @ Amazon.com.




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Richard A. Loftus

5.0 out of 5 starsPractical observations/advice on all-organic pest control, with some surprisesJune 20, 2016
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Many reasons to like this book--it's well written and organized and is clearly based on Anna's lived experience on her homestead in Virginia. It's not theory--she walks the walk. I liked that she included commentaries from her blog readers living in a wide variety of parts of the US (Portland; Missouri; Texas) to give perspectives from other biomes--I doubt I'll run into crayfish holes in my arid California garden! It's not encyclopedic but when she thinks the reader would need more information she cites specific books or web resources for that. Intriguing surprises: she's not much for traditional companion planting and explains why, and outlines how succession planting and trap crops can work in her own experience. She also isn't big on the use of chickens, ducks or other domestic animals as pest controllers in most gardens and cites the reasons, although she uses a chicken tractor in a very limited way. She outlines why she (and many of her readers) prefers to use wild predators instead, and how elegantly it can work. The book is heavily illustrated with color photos from her own and other contributors' gardens. I think what I learned the most from was seeing how her brain works--from reading this text you can see her example of using careful observation, research, and trial and error to fine tune moving her garden forward each season. As a novice gardener I'm glad I bought it and will check out her other books.

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Teri Hanna

5.0 out of 5 starsEvery Home Gardener Needs This Guidebook!November 10, 2014
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Great book for all gardeners who fight battle with bugs in the garden. I love her writing and easy to understand style. I love her photographs, they clearly show what she is talking about. Anna and her husband grow their own food in Virginia. You get her personal story and her personal battle with bugs. I can connect with her through her personal journey to get rid of pests in the garden. Anna teaches us to identify the bad bugs first. She uses a Mother Earth News map and survey showing the worst bugs in each region. She gives a couple of resources for learning about the bugs in your garden, her favorite book and an online resource. Anna gives us the worst bugs, how to promote good bugs, pollinators, ecosystem bugs, box turtle friends who eat slugs and snails, letting nature take it's course, outthinking the bugs, choosing resistant plant varieties, using row covers, keeping plants healthy, hands on bug control-yes picking them off and eating blemished fruit. She gives all this great information and writes it in an entertaining style along with photographs from her garden. This book is a treat! Also at the end you will find a preview of another of her books: Homegrown Hummus and Cover Crops. Every gardener needs a copy of this great garden book - I just love it! Get your copy today!

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shgannon

5.0 out of 5 starswould give 7 stars if I could!April 24, 2014
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This book is so valuable for a gardener! It not only well-written, the photos are many and excellent for identifying pests. Once again this author has written a keeper of a book. This one should be kept by every gardener. Identifying pests becomes so easy and she gives ways of controlling the pests with natural means or safe remedies and the book gives info on good and bad creatures in your garden. Altho mainly for vegetable and fruit gardening there is also good info on flower pests. She writes as if she is sitting across from you and she shares what did or didnt work for her. Love it!

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Richard Hoffman

5.0 out of 5 starsand how plant rotation can contribute to keeping bad bugs at bayNovember 20, 2014
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The Naturally Bug-Free Garden gives sage advice about how to garden without the use of pesticides or poisons. Writing from her own experience and research, the author provides extremely valuable techniques for dealing with many garden pests. She uses, not only gardening but ecological and environmental practices to thwart enemies of the plants. Her practices match my own experiences as a chemical-free gardener. Anna Hess shows how to attract beneficial bugs to the garden, tells about plant methods of self-defense, explains the role of nutrition in plant protection, and how plant rotation can contribute to keeping bad bugs at bay. Her fluent and humorous writing style captivates the reader while providing great insights for gardeners at every experiential level. This book covers many more topics than those mentioned here. I highly recommend this book to anyone who does anything in a garden! There are so many gems of wisdom in this book!

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Shirley Oates

5.0 out of 5 stars... gardner who is interested in finding out what are good pest and bad pest I highly recommend this bookApril 13, 2015
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If you are a gardner who is interested in finding out what are good pest and bad pest I highly recommend this book.. I have found it very interesting.
I have found that there are good insects to control the bad ones and you do not need to use poisons on flowers and vegetables to keep you healthy.
I do Highly Recommend it to anyone interested in being a serious gardner.

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Wayne J. Villines

4.0 out of 5 starsNeeds to be a little longer but still good and easy to readAugust 27, 2018
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This was and is a very information filled book. But I feel let down because I simply wanted the book to take longer to read through. It is a book worthy of any one looking to improve there foundational knowledge of food growing almost naturally.


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DreamCatcherDD

4.0 out of 5 starsAwesomeJanuary 29, 2017
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Love knowing about what I am up against with my first garden the book would have been a five star if it had some pointers about matching plants together to help like growing cucumbers over your squash stops the borer. But in all worth getting:)

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Patty

5.0 out of 5 starsGreat for Natural GrowersMay 15, 2015
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What can I say, I have become partial to Ms. Hess. Great guide with a lot of ideas on getting those buggers out. As a natural homesteader who prefers not to use chemicals at all, this is great. Good work again!

Introduction to Permaculture: Bill Mollison

Introduction to Permaculture: Bill Mollison
: 9780908228089: Amazon.com: Books

5.0 out of 5 starsGreat intro and overview

March 12, 2010
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This is a great introduction and overview of permaculture concepts. The book covers a lot of material for initiates to permaculture. It's sets the foundation for further reading and studies for those who want to get serious though one could take the principles learned just from this book alone and be quite successful in my opinion. 

You learn how the sun, wind and rain, all play an important role in siting structures like homes, sheds, barns, green and shade houses and also in garden and plant selection and placement. 

The book also covers designing for temperate, tropical and dry-land environments. 

It explains how interconnected relationships between the land, climate, soils, water, structures, flora and fauna can be fostered to the benefit of all. 

There are just so many creative ideas and diagrams in this book that it is worth it for those alone. 
The book is 8 1/4 X 11 inches with small print that fills the pages with valuable information. I want to live in the sub-tropics of Hawaii and enjoyed the coverage in this regard but, the book also left me day dreaming about living the permaculture lifestyle in other areas like the High Desert of New Mexico and the Pacific Northwest of Oregon. 

This book touches on all the possibilities, from the home garden with a few animals to commercial orchards, forests, animal farms, aquaculture, urban gardens and more. 

But don't get me wrong, it does not cover these topics in depth, it gives a thorough introduction to these topics and an understanding that one would likely not gain by reading just one book. Also each chapter ends with a list of references for further reading. 

In addition there are appendices listing useful permaculture plants, such as nitrogen fixing plants. One appendix even breaks it down into useful categories, such as fruit plants and trees for temperate, topical/sub-tropical and dry areas,pest control plants and finally appendices which list hundreds of the plants mentioned in the text by common, Latin, and by species names. 

The book ends with a glossary of key terms used in the book and few pages about Bill Mollison (One of the founders of permaculture) and the permaculture institute including info on their 72 hour PC Design Certificate Course. 
This book is highly recommended!

Chris Nixon

1.0 out of 5 starsBig disappointment - buy almost anything else.September 17, 2016
Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase
Big disappointment.
Reads like a technical manual with very little technical explanation. Using the word "introduction" to describe this book is inaccurate,
While Mollison is key to studying permaculture, this "introduction" is a WASTE of your money. Very little explanation or philosophy and lots of line drawings with little context. Download the PDF of the larger work on design and read the first chapter and you'll have exponentially more information introducing you to permaculture than this entire volume.
I don't know who the target audience is for this work, but they didn't do beginning permaculture explorers any favors here. Buy almost any other introduction. Wish I would have spent double and gotten the larger Mollison design book.
The edition I got was from Tagari publications 2nd edition 2013 and says Bill Mollison with Reny Mia Slay.

3 people found this helpful

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sulkahlee

5.0 out of 5 starsThis book is exactly what the title states.October 19, 2011
Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase
This is a book that leaves you wanting to know more about Permaculture. It gives general information about the subject and how it can be applied to general locations as you would expect in an introduction. It doesn't, and I didn't expect it to give, details about what I should consider doing in my particular location. It did, however, give me ideas about what might be done and clues about where to get the information I will need to do it.

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R. Lopez

5.0 out of 5 starsRE: A classicNovember 27, 2012
Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase
I've been studying permaculture for about a year prior to reading this book. While I have learned a lot via the Internet, it does not compare with the material presented in this book. A good understanding of the principles and applications of permaculture is essential to its successful implementation.

Edible Landscaping with a Permaculture Twist: How to Have Your Yard and Eat It Too: Michael Judd: 0884271693082: Amazon.com: Books



Edible Landscaping with a Permaculture Twist: How to Have Your Yard and Eat It Too: Michael Judd: 0884271693082: Amazon.com: Books







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Edible Landscaping with a Permaculture Twist is a how-to manual for the budding gardener and experienced green thumb alike, full of creative and easy-to-follow designs that guide you to having your yard and eating it, too. 

With the help of more than 200 beautiful color photos and drawings, permaculture designer and avid grower Michael Judd takes the reader on a step-by-step process to transform a sea of grass into a flourishing edible landscape that pleases the eye as well as the taste buds. 

With personality and humor, he translates the complexities of permaculture design into simple self-build projects, providing full details on the evolving design process, material identification, and costs. 


Chapters cover:
Herb Spirals
Food Forests
Raised-Bed Gardens

Earthen Ovens
Uncommon Fruits
Outdoor Mushroom Cultivation, and more . . .

The book’s colorful pages are filled with practical designs that Judd has created and built over years of workshops, homesteading, and running an edible landscaping business. Though geared toward suburban gardeners starting from scratch, the book's designs can be easily grafted to the micro-habits of the urban landscape, scaled up to the acreage of homesteads, or adapted to already flourishing landscapes. Edible Landscaping with a Permaculture Twist is a tool to spark and inform the imagination of anyone with a desire to turn their landscape into a luscious and productive edible Eden.

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Edible Landscaping with a Permaculture Twist: How to Have Your Yard and Eat It Too Paperback – December 16, 2013

by Michael Judd (Author)

4.5 out of 5 stars 106 customer reviews


Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Michael Judd has worked with agro-ecological and whole-system designs throughout the Americas for nearly two decades, focusing on applying permaculture and ecological design. 

His projects increase local food security and community health in both tropical and temperate growing regions. He is the founder of Ecologia Edible & Ecological Landscape Design and Project Bona Fide, an international nonprofit supporting agro-ecology research.

Michael lives with his wife, Ashley, in Frederick, Maryland, where they are creating a permaculture homestead. They are building a circular straw bale home and expecting a baby ninja by the end of 2013.

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Product details

Paperback: 144 pages


Publisher: Ecologia; 1st edition (December 16, 2013)


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106 customer reviews

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highly recommend michael judd growing mushrooms permaculture books get started fun read food forest herb garden suburban homeowner pizza oven front yard great photos book really fruit tree recommend this book beautifully illustrated easy to read really enjoyed step by step herb spirals

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crazybooknerd

5.0 out of 5 starsFABULOUS book for the smaller scale home gardener who values aesthetics in the garden as much as habitat and function

May 20, 2016

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

I really really really love this book! I found it at the library along with many of the other popular permaculture books you find on Amazon. After a couple months of reviewing them all, I found myself continuously just going back to this one as reference. We're just putting in our first permaculture garden, in a house we just moved into, and this one just seemed to be the most practical with the most useful info for a small scale permaculture home gardener.




While there are other great books, I find that a lot of them are just completely not useful for our needs due to the scale of the designs and projects that they focus on. Many are for properties several acres or more. We have about 1/3 acre to make into a garden, in the middle of a subdivision. This one is really helping us figure out how to blend two different things that we want in our yard: a beautiful, ornamental communal/hang out space and herb garden right up against the house; and then from there going back to a food forest with espalier fruit trees and berry bushes lining the entire perimeter of our yard, providing food as well as privacy from our neighbors.




If you're looking for a how-to on setting up a large scale homestead with grazing land, barns, etc. then there are other books that will be useful for you. But for the small scale (<1 acre lot), this is the most practical permaculture book that I found, and I recommend it above the others.




One last thing. Part of what I *don't* like about some of the permaculture books, is the total chaos seen in the demonstration pics included. 

While I like a garden that looks more "wild and whimsical" and for sure stay away from straight rows and ordered, highly-groomed landscaping; I also want something that is aesthetically beautiful, especially right up against the house. Basically, I like the English Country Garden look...everything exploding in coordinated flowers and colors, in soft soothing tones. I don't like looking out and just seeing what looks like a bunch of dried weeds and mishmash everywhere. I know a huge part of permaculture is biodiversity, and that's important. With Edible Landscaping, I believe I can achieve both. For example, at the base of every fruit tree I learned we should plant "plant guilds" composed of 4 different types of plants that will benefit and nourish the tree while attracting beneficial insects to kill the "bad guy" insects. In a lot of the permaculture books these guilds just look like a bunch of random weeds and/or plants, but in this book, I see diagrams of plants that aesthetically blend well together creating a more intentional look.




Anyway, the summary is that with the help of this book, I believe that I'll be able to achieve EVERYTHING of what I want--a closed ecosystem that self-sustains and provides habitat for all the wonderful birds and critters I hope to invite, a food garden that doesn't require the input of outside fertilizers etc, and a food garden that over time will feed the household. And all on a semi-small urban lot!

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Life Healer

5.0 out of 5 starsGreat sustainable gardening plans and ideas!

February 14, 2014

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

I've been gardening for a number of years (I'll decline to share how many) and have a pretty large collection of gardening and landscape books. Most of the newer books I look at just have a more modern twist on the same old tried and true principals that have been around forever, maybe with some updated pretty photos for explanation and motivation. 

This book surprised me. I learned some new things, and got new ideas. I especially love that Judd focuses on sustainability and (almost but not quite more important) low maintenance gardening ideas and planting suggestions. This book has great photos, clear instructions and even has recipes for drinks using the edible fruits you harvest. Judd has an easy going approach to his writing that is interspersed with humor. You could totally see yourself leaning on a shovel conversing with him about beneficials and compost - or, if you follow his suggestions, you'd more likely be chatting while relaxing in a hammock with a drink! I've already recommended this book to several of my gardening friends. Great stuff!!

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J. Daniels

4.0 out of 5 stars
Less so a landscaping book, more a Permaculture techniques guide.

October 31, 2018

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

I love Permaculture and Edible Landscaping, but this book is geared much more towards Permaculture. It's focused on a few techniques used in Permaculture setups such as Hugelkultur and swales. Other than the few methods it covers to create a sustainable food system, it doesn't offer much in the way of actually landscaping or utilizing certain plants to create a pleasing aesthetic which is one of the odder (but understandable) complaints I hear about Food Forests. If you're looking for a book to give you a list of attractive flowers, shrubs, etc. with multiple functions other than just being pretty, this probably isn't for you. If you're looking to implement low input food gardens, have a curiosity about how to use mushrooms to clean your water runoff, or what is and how to sheet mulch, this is a good book for you. 

This book didn't fill the gap in my knowledge I was hoping for, but it reinforces other information for people looking to create healthy, holistic, and sustainable food-bearing landscapes to enjoy.

One person found this helpful
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Edward Earl Greer

4.0 out of 5 starsGreat start for permaculture

March 27, 2014

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

Liked the way the book was written. I have a small collection of permaculture books. This book skips the theory and gets directly to what a lot of novice permaculturists want to know to get started. Has a lot of great photos and drawings with easy to follow directions to get started. The author created his garden in Maryland with similar conditions to my area in northern Va was helpful for me. Most of the permaculture books I read take place in northern climates so their choice of plants may not work for my area. But if you read these books, you would know it's a trial and error thing, finding what works best in your setup.

13 people found this helpful

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Michelle Salois

5.0 out of 5 stars
Very practical, very clear. Almost like permaculture for dummies.

July 16, 2014

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

I've read several Permaculture books now and 
this would be the one I'd recommend as a first book to someone who doesn't care about all the science behind it, nor all the principles of design, and just wants to jump ahead to implementation on a urban or suburban yard. 

Very easy to read, easy to understand, great photos and diagrams & illustrations. It is not an introduction to permaculture but an action plan for the urban or suburban homeowner. A unique aspect is it has lots of recipes for cocktails and even to make wine. I think it was a mistake to include the making of the cob oven when he could have used the space to tell about chickens, or about vertical elements to grow more food in less space while stacking functions such as shade and moderating sun or wind on the house, or about building water features. Hopefully he'll drop the oven chapter and add some of these others in his second edition!

7 people found this helpful

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