By Robert E. Sullivan. © Earth Times News Service. July 13, 2000.
HAVANA--The Cuban revolutionary threat is back. In an innocuous-looking, unmarked building in the Miramar suburb of Havana technicians from Fidel Castro's communist government are training cadres from all over Latin America.
The ideology of the new movement is being exported, along with equipment, to nearby Venezuela, Columbia and Jamaica, other Latin American countries, and this time, as far as Europe. Americans, so far, have been protected by the embargo from the product of the Cuban revolution: clean food.
The food is clean -- largely free of chemical fertilizers and poisonous pesticides and herbicides -- because since the fall of the Big Brother Soviet Union Cuba can't afford them.
And, necessity in this case being the mother of nature, Cuba may be producing the most chemical free, organic, clean produce in the world. According to the way they tell it, Cubans are getting so good at this organic business that agronomists from all over Latin America come to study it at the
Institute for Crop Protection (INISAV) a low profile center housed in a former private home in the quiet residential section of Miramar. Trained at INISAV and sent out again to the world to agitate, have been agronomists from Mexico, Colombia, Argentina, Spain Brazil, Costa Rica Ecuador Guatemala
and Jamaica. At least a half dozen other countries have signed up, but the discrete directors at INISAV won't reveal their nationalities because, they say, the trainees think their home countries will suffer retaliation from the United States.
The institute has developed a line of completely biological herbicides and pesticides marketed throughout the island under the brand name Biasav.
This year Cuba, next the world. Exports of Biasav have begun -Not to America of course, but to most of the above countries and others. And in Cuba almost 100,000 small-to-medium sized urban gardens have sprung up to provide an ever increasing percentage of the country's vegetable needs. One
hundred per cent of the produce if these gardens is 100 per cent organic - simply because of a central dictate: no pesticides are allowed inside any city limits. Period. And this comes from the Castro government which is committed to clean food.
What happened?
Ask any ten Cuban agronomists -- they have 140 Ph.D.s in the Agriculture Ministry alone, plus 10,000 graduate agronomic engineers --, why has Cuba gone organic and you'll get the same answer ten times: it is safer for the campesinos or workers in the field; safer for the workers who consume, and
safer for the workers' families. It is, after all a socialist country. "Agriculture of the humble, by the humble and for the humble" said one government functionary.
But all ten will admit, not even pressed, that the real incentive was the loss of the Soviet support.
When the Soviets were supplying chemical fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides, and tractor driven equipment to apply them, "we used to spray the crops every six days," said INISAV engineer Esperanza Rijo-Camacho "whether they needed it or not."
"Luckily, and I choose my words carefully, luckily, the roof caved in 1989," said Mavis Alvarez of the Cuban Small Farmers' Association (ANAP) which has decided to go as organic as possible because it the system is sustainable. "It made us pay attention to that which was already
there â€| more rational methods."
"We like to call it 'ecological agriculture'," Alvarez said. "It is a much wider concept which involves harmony with the land, and the environment.""If we don't save our natural resources, we are without a basis for development," Alvarez said in her office in a
converted rich family's mansion, also in Miramar.
" The campesino in the land is much more able to cooperate with the environment" than large scale farms, she said.
" He has traditionally been conservative because of the impact on his land."
And in Cuba the small farmer is no small potatoes. "We have about 250,000 members and with their families that averages out to about a million people working the land," she said, "And we are not a non-governmental organization. We are part of the revolution and support it."
" It is not a matter of convincing anyone" like American organic farmers sometimes try to do, " she said, "the state is committed to ecological farming."
Yes it is, said Juan Jose Leon Vega, the director of external relations for the Agriculture Ministry. " I don't believe many people know how big organic farming in Cuba really is," he said in his large office atop a six story ministry building. How big? About 1,500,000 hectares (3.7
million acres) totally biological, he said, of a total of about 2,500,000 (6.2 million) non-sugar hectares of farmland.
The rest, because of shortages, get precious few artificial fertilizers and with some exceptions like rice, virtually no chemical pesticides or herbicides.
"This is true, " said Leon-Vega, drawing in his ministerial voice for a proclamation of some importance, "For two reasons."First is the disappearance within one year, within one year, of Soviet aid, including millions of tons of fertilizers, insecticide and pesticides, all
our tractors, and more importantly, the oil to run them.
"The second is the blockade. It now costs about $800,000 to $1,000,000 per shipment, of anything, not even counting the contents," he said implying that shipping would be a heck of a lot cheaper to and from Florida, about 90 miles away.
One big result of the double trouble was the 1993 decision to break up the big state owned farms and give the land to the campesinos.
When Fidel Castro came to power in 1959, about 20 per cent of the land was put in the private hands of campesinos who farmed it and 80 per cent held by the state in the form of huge soviet-style farms.
Because, according to Leon-Vega, among other things "animal traction" is more efficient in small parcels, than on big farms, the government did a land office business getting rid of huge haciendas, by breaking them up into small parcels and selling them on long term mortgages to the
workers who work them.
The result is now some 74 per cent of the non-sugar farmland is in private hands either in the form of cooperatives, or in small farms. "In times of difficulty we cannot efficiently run big estates," he said. "Individual farmers can use smaller scale of production.""To
that end, we - our ministry - trained 200,000 oxen to plow," he said. "You should have seen that."
"We have, " he said, the most organic agriculture production in the world."How can he be so sure? It is a socialist country: the ministry imports 100 per cent of the chemical fertilizers - down to less than a sixth of pre soviet levels, and all the chemical pesticides and
herbicides, - a fraction of a sixth.
"And," says "Leon-Vega, "We decide who gets it," which generally means large scale mono-cultures which call for some help, like sugar and rice.
Two hypothetical questions for the minister:
1) What would happen if he got an unlimited supply of cheap chemicals? "First of all, we are not completely organic. It is a dream, but we can never be 100 per cent organic.
"But we would still go ahead with biological agriculture. That is the basic philosophy."
2) What would happen if the blockade disappeared?"The day the market opens Cuba will be the most important source for America for organic products."Americans want clan food. We grow the cleanest food on the continent. No other country on the continent has the capacity, the
possibilities, and the initiative. Also, we are close."
" That coffee you are drinking, " he said, "is organic."Well, maybe almost organic. In an unescorted drive through the western coffee producing provinces - encouraged by government spokesmen, a pair of reporters shared some home-made rum drinks, and some off-the-cuff chats
with campesinos who said they spread the nitrogen rich chemical urea whenever they can get it. One said he was exhausted from spending the entire day spreading the chemical compound at a state-run coffee plantation. He was glad of it, he said, because according to the government policy, the
campesinos get more money if the production - quality and quantity - is up.However, the key appears to be just what the minister said it would be: availability.
There isn't much of it to go around in the countryside.What is around in the countryside is evidence of a socialist system working with private landowners. When the system decides to go organic, the campesinos have little choice. They go organic too. But they get a lot of help, especially along
the line of biological pest control. Cuban private farmers can either go it alone, in which case they rent tractors and buy seeds, fertilizers, and pest sprays from the credit service companies set up by the government, or they join forces in a cooperative, which buys, collectively, its tractors
seeds, and pest repellants from the government. The pest repellants are biological. But even better: they are local.
The Crop Protection Institute has some 222 local Centers for the Reproduction of Entomophages and Entomopathogens (CREES) which produce extremely inexpensive biological agents made up of bugs who eat pesky bugs, virus that combat bad viruses, larvae that kill other pests, and all manner of
natural weapons to combat what campesinos universally call "the plague," be it animal, virus or fungus.
In some cases the sprays are made up of sliced up bodies of the pest themselves, mixed with water sprayed in the often successful theory that no species wants to hang around with the smell of its own dead.In all cases the stuff is made down the road - and, if all goes well, at a time when it is
needed locally, production, distribution and market timing not being things for which socialist countries are usually most famous.Socialist countries, are, however, noted for committees. The Republic of Chile Credit Services in Vinales, Pinar del Rio Province, is no exception. Seven technically
trained experts serve a credit service group of only 33 owners, each of which has about 7.5 hectares (18 acres), of mixed farms. When farmer Cirrillo Rodrequez, 65, has a problem seven technically trained members of the local government committee are available to talk to him. Even if he doesn't have
a problem, the agronomic engineers show up anyway, saying something akin to we're from the government, we're here to help you. And help they do. They know the signs indicating which "plague" is hitting his rice, corn, root crops, pigs, chickens and vegetables, and what biological products
can be applied to help. He gets the sprays from the local CREE.
As fertilizer Rodrequez gets, from the committee, rotted leftover vegetation from industrial sugar and tobacco production.In the dry season he rents a tractor to take from a nearby low-lying swamp dead vegetation similar to peat moss that provides humus for the soil."That is a traditional
method that campesinos have used for generations," said Miguel Dominguez, a provincial agronomic engineer "but what we do now is explain how and why it works: basically we are recovering the topsoil and humus eroded into the swamp from the mountainside. We are recycling.""Other
soil conservation methods are not traditional, " he said. "For instance we give any campesino who asks any trees he wants, free, to help in soil conservation. We also guide them on which are the best, and how to care for them."
As for Rodrequez himself, what, for him, is the difference since 1989?"It is pretty much the same as in my grandfather's day, except now and again we get a tractor."And the fertilizer?"Well, once, a few years back, I put a lot of urea on the rice," he said in full view of
five members of the local committee, " and the whole lot grew up like crazy, got very tall, and then fell over from their own height."If that sounded a bit too preachy, he later admitted that if he had a shot at some more urea, he'd use it, but a lot less. Not much chance of overdoing it
however, since, as minister Leon-Vega explained, and agronomic engineer Dominguez confirmed in Vinales, the central government controls who gets the chemicals. And a philosophical decision means the peasant farmer out in the boondocks, who is not working on large scale production of a single crop,
isn't very likely to get his hands on chemicals, unless the system breaks down, which it doesn't.If the country guy is unlikely to get many chemicals, his city cousin is entirely without. Castro's government has banned the use of any chemical fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides within the borders
of any Cuban municipality - to protect the workers, their families and the water they drink.
This is not an inconsiderable factor.According to minister Leon-Vega there are exactly 2,600 large scale organic gardens in cities throughout the island, 3,600 smaller, intensive gardens, and 93,948 little parcels run by families for their own use, and every single mother's son of them is an
organic farmer. How do you know that, - so precisely, Mr. Minister?"We sell them their seeds, and their fertilizer and their pest controls, and it is all organic."
The result, by and large is clean food for Cubans. Marty Bourque of Food First, an Oakland California think tank specializing in food policy worldwide, said " because of the drastic reduction of pesticides and fertilizers overall in Cuba, it has to be much cleaner than any other country, in
general terms. And in particular terms too. In fruit and vegetables, for example, and these are very important areas because the stuff comes in fresh off the fields."In the large- scale production of such things as sugar, rice, and potatoes, they use very little insecticide, and only where they
absolutely have to, and then only on the areas that absolutely need it, unlike some places in the United States where they, whether they admit it or not, use pesticides by the calendar, whether they need it or not.
"The food is not labeled organic, or certified organic, it just is organic. And it is not a two-tier market with organic food only for those who can afford it. It is organic food for everyone."What are the chances of it reaching American shores? Very remote.One entry to the American
market might have been through setting up a joint venture with some European countries to produce the biological pest control solutions.
"We had a lot of interested parties, " said Dr. Emilio Fernandez of the Crop Protection Institute, "but they were afraid if they did business with us, their own exports (to the United States) would be cut off."So today it is Cuba. The world tomorrow, and the United States
maybe a little after that.
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