Viva la revolución: Cuban farmers re-gain control over land | Global Development Professionals Network | The Guardian
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Viva la revolución: Cuban farmers re-gain control over land
As the state loosens its grip on food production, Cuban farmers and independent co-operatives will need support to help solve the country's agriculture crisis
Alexa van Sickle
Wed 12 Mar 2014
Cuba has begun lending unused land to farmers and co-operatives to boost food production. Photograph: Javier Galeano/AP
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Last year, Cuba spent over $1.6bn (£1bn) on food imports, an unsustainable amount for an economy that has been struggling since the end of the cold war and the collapse of its trading partner, the Soviet Union, through which it also lost 80% of its pesticide and fertiliser imports.
Today, Cuba still imports about 60% of its domestic food requirement, making it highly vulnerable to price increases, changes in food supply and the impacts of natural disasters.
Since 2007, President Raul Castro, noting its connection with national security, has made food security a priority. State farms hold over 70% of Cuba's agricultural land; about 6.7m hectares. In 2007, 45% of this land was sitting idle. In 2008 Castro allowed private farmers and co-operatives to lease unused land with decentralised decision-making, and loosened regulations on farmers selling directly to consumers. Since 2010, Cubans with small garden plots, and small farmers, have been allowed to sell produce directly to consumers.
However, agriculture in Cuba remains in crisis. A government report issued in July 2013 showed that productivity had not increased. But there have been some successes and valuable lessons in the past few years that can help foreign aid organisations target resources and support.
Learning from successful co-operatives or farming initiatives is key, according to Christina Polzot, Cuban country representative for Care International.
"I think the greatest contribution is capacity building, especially as it relates to building management capacity at the local level," she said.
One successful example comes from Cuba's 'urban' agriculture. Urban farms are now thought to supply around 70% of fruits and vegetables consumed in cities such as Havana and Santa Clara. Vivero Alamar is an urban co-op just outside Havana that has sustained growth for 15 years. Co-op president Miguel Angel Salcines believes that the key to achieving food security in Cuba is to train agricultural workers with a 'vocation' for farming, and continuous upgrading of equipment.
The Cuban agricultural sector remains highly de-capitalised, but aid organisations can to some degree support it with agricultural materials and appropriate technologies. They can also boost the capacity of private farmers by training local farmers in sustainable agricultural practices, and helping co-ops develop modern business practices.
Canada, one of Cuba's biggest donors, provides technical training in planning, environmental sustainability, and also gender equality for effective management of farming. It also helped increase Cuba's forest cover by 1%, by planting 106,000 hectares of new seedlings.
Researchers can identify inefficiencies in the supply chain and where possible make recommendations.
Care in Canada also helped improve dairy production (pdf) – which has been a huge challenge for the country – by building and furnishing milk collection and conservation centres in co-ops, and advising on the supply chain. They also made infrastructure improvements for individual farms and created an exchange programme for Canadian and Cuban farmers.
In 2007, Castro had called the milk collection and distribution system "absurd" after finding that in Mantua in the west of Cuba, a few bottles of locally produced milk would make a long journey, but then return and be delivered to the house next door.
But Cuba has other challenges beyond the production system; it suffers from salinity, erosion, poor drainage, low fertility, acidity, low organic material content, poor retention of humidity, and desertification. One obstacle to increasing productivity has been a lack of knowledge among farmers about improving and conserving agricultural resources.
A pilot progamme implemented by Cuba's Soil Institute and supported by the United Nations Development Programme, to improve the conservation of soil, water and forest land, gives 35 agricultural units training, technical assistance, and supplies – targeted at their own specific challenges. It includes planting forest trees on farms, searching new sources of water; no-till farming; live barriers to erosion made of plants and rocks, and using organic fertilisers.
Aid organisations in the country should also support agricultural initiatives in Cuba's easternmost – and poorest – provinces, which are most vulnerable to coastal flooding.
Although the reform in agriculture has gone further than in many other sections of economic life, it may still be too early to gauge the effects. Polzot says it is possible that the reforms will increase autonomy because, for example, the more recent reforms have allowed private co-operatives to handle their own commercialisation.
But as yet, farmers are not allowed to import supplies or purchase produce at will. Armando Nova, a Cuban economist, suggested in a paper last year that the system would be more efficient if farmers did not have to wait for supplies to be assigned and delivered by the state; there are still delays in transport and a lot of spoilage.
There is concern among farmers that the government will at some point change its mind, scale back the reforms, and seize the land leased to farmers – and that it is unwilling to cede all control of the process.
In November 2013, the government issued a decree placing the management of food production entirely in non-state hands, to run experimentally in selected districts before going nationwide in 2015. For the moment, it seems the Cuban government is committed to its goal of putting Cuba on the road to food security. Aid organisations can help ensure that these initiatives are successful.
Alexa van Sickle is assistant editor of publications at International Institute for Strategic Studies. Follow @IISS_org on Twitter
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comments (15)
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waginn
12 Mar 2014 5:36
56
I can't pretend to know how to grow food in Cuba but I am a farmer. Anyone who has read Frank Dikotter's book Mao's Great Famine must see that when decisions are made with a " one size fits all " policy from an out of touch ruling class that disaster follows. Stalin in Russia , Mao in China and Mugabe in Zimbabwe were not renowned for their understanding of farming.
When farmers, like any small businessman, see that science and logic has gone out the window and been replaced by political doctrine then they will stop investing and try to ride out the storm , if too many of them fail then a great amount of first hand knowledge is lost when they leave the land.
To get this knowledge back onto the land takes a large amount of time and encouragement, they have to feel that if they can grow two ears of wheat where they grew one the previous year that process can allow them to improve their own lives as well.
Interestingly in Britain during the war years many farmers were forced off their farms for not being efficient by the Ministry of Agriculture (War Ag), their land was given to those that were adopting the modern methods necessitated by the German navel blockade. So in this instance there was a " more stick than carrot " approach which left a lasting impression on the next generations of farmers.
" Armando Nova, a Cuban economist, suggested in a paper last year that the system would be more efficient if farmers did not have to wait for supplies to be assigned and delivered by the state; there are still delays in transport and a lot of spoilage."
This sentence will send a shudder down the back of farmers in this country, you grow your crop then lose it because the fertilizer is late getting to the farm or as we used to hear of in the USSR you grow the crop then can't harvest because the diesel for the combine has been pilfered by corrupt officials.
I wish the Cuban farmers the best of luck.
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Fernando Leanme waginn
12 Mar 2014 7:11
01
I was young and lived in Cuba, and saw first hand the utter destruction of Cuba's agriculture by Fidel Castro. And I read a statement by Guaicapuro Lameda, a Venezuelan socialist who quoted Fidel saying "people have to be kept busy, even if it's looking around for food".
The hunger, the food lines, the lack of water, the terror, all to keep that degenerate regime in power.....
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JulioRayuela Fernando Leanme
17 Mar 2014 10:19
01
I was young and lived in Cuba, and saw first hand the utter destruction of Cuba's agriculture by Fidel Castro.
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Elsewhere you say you left Cuba with your parents when you were five years old. Are you really saying that your deep interest in and concern for – not to mention knowledge of – political and economic issues pre-dates your having attended even a primary school? Fernando "Readme", your precocity impresses me.
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zuftawov943
12 Mar 2014 9:31
12
For all the errors - not least Fidel's ill-informed involvement in trying to breed disease-resistant cattle that would yield milk at western European levels - Cuba has fed its people, despite a trade embargo imposed by the USA and despite the vicissitudes of Cuba's relations with the USSR - and despite many a hurricane.
Not always fed them well - indeed not - but not badly in Latin American terms, not badly when compared with the plight of the poor in the semi-arid lands of NE Brazil whenever the rains have either failed or turned too copious.
It's important to remember what an enormous difficulty arose from the peevish rejection of Cuba by the US, which had been the source of a very high proportion of Cuba's agricultural and industrial imports, and had been the market for a similarly high proportion of Cuba's agricultural exports.
All of a sudden, circa 1960, that inter-change ceased, to be all too inadequately succeeded by a clumsy link with a Soviet Union that knew little of tropical agricultural and allowed Cuba little advantage within the dilatory, erratic Comecon, the Soviet bloc's international commercial mechanism that was denominated in distrusted roubles of mysteriously varying values determined in Moscow.
No famine in Cuba - good going, in the circumstances. No reform of land management - bad going, in the circumstances. Now those of us who live long enough will see how the latest, lumbering changes pan out.
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Fernando Leanme zuftawov943
13 Mar 2014 7:06
12
Yeah, we Cubans are happy being fed communist garbage and being your slaves. You see we are uniquely suited to be tortured, abused and murdered. And we really enjoy reading how people like you make excuses for the Castro.
I want you to join our misery as we fight Yankee imperialism. You will learn to clean your behind with Juventud Rebelde, drink sugar water for breakfast, stand in line for three hours for two eggs, keep your mouth shut and never say much, think what they want you to think, and at the end of the day you can shout "Viva Fidel".
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Cubaverdad zuftawov943
13 Mar 2014 19:57
23
Cuba isn't - and has never - fed its people.
Before Castro Cuba was self-sufficient in rice, its staple food, with a consumption per capital of three times as high. Two years after Fidel seized power production had fallen by 50%.
Soviet subsidies kept the regime afloat. Today Cuba needs to import 70 to 80% of the food it consumes.
The Stalinist collectivization and sometimes megalomaniac mismanagement of the sector (Castro's goal to have a 10 million ton sugar harvest) destroyed local food production. Independent farmers were 4 time more productive than the state farms.
Cubans are fad badly by Latin American standards. Even the regime admits to rampant vitamin and iron deficiencies in children.
Your false claim that the scarcity of food is the result of the trade sanctions has been rejected by Raul Castro himself:
"Castro took a few swipes at the U.S. trade embargo that has been in
place since 1962, but made it clear Cubans have only themselves to blame for agriculture shortages."
Castro calls for tight finances in Cuba - CNN.com (26 July 2009)
An end to the Castro regime is the only way to end poverty and hunger in Cuba.
