Patel writes: "The Studebakers plying up and down Havana's boardwalk aren't
the best advertisement for dynamism and innovation. But if you want to see
what tomorrow's fossil-fuel-free, climate-change-resilient, high-tech
farming looks like, there are few places on earth like the Republic of
Cuba."
Farmers in Cuba. (photo: AFP/Getty Images)
What Cuba Can Teach Us About Food and Climate Change
By Raj Patel, New Republic
02 January 16
After the Cold War, Cuba faced many of the agricultural challenges that the
rest of the world is now anticipating.
The Studebakers plying up and down Havanas boardwalk arent the best
advertisement for dynamism and innovation. But if you want to see what
tomorrows fossil-fuel-free, climate-change-resilient, high-tech farming
looks like, there are few places on earth like the Republic of Cuba.
Under the Warsaw Pact, Cuba sent rum and sugar to the red side of the Iron
Curtain. In exchange, it received food, oil, machinery, and as many
petrochemicals as it could shake a stick at. From the Missile Crisis to the
twilight of the Soviet Union, Cuba was one of the largest importers of
agricultural chemicals in Latin America. But when the Iron Curtain fell, the
supply lines were cut, and tractors rusted in the fields.
Unable to afford the fertilizers and pesticides that 20th-century
agriculture had taken for granted, the country faced extreme weather events
and a limit to the land and water it could use to grow food. The rest of the
world will soon face many of the same problems: In the coming decade,
according to the OECD, well see higher fuel and fertilizer costs, more
variable climate patterns, and limits to arable land that will drive cereal
prices 20 percent higher and hike meat prices by 30 percentand thats just
the beginning. Policymakers can find inspirational and salutary ideas about
how to confront this crisis in Cuba, the reluctant laboratory for
21st-century agriculture.
Cuban officials faced the crisis clumsily. They didnt know how to transform
an economy geared toward sweetening Eastern Europe into one that could feed
folk at home. Agronomists had been schooled in the virtues of large-scale
industrial collective agriculture. When the industrial part became
impossible, they insisted on yet more collectivization. The dramatic decline
in crop production between 1990 and 1994, during which the average Cuban
lost 20 pounds, was known as the Special Period. Cubans have a line in
comedy as dark as their rum.
Cuban peasants proved more enterprising than the government and demanded
change. First, they wanted control over land. The state had owned 79 percent
of arable land, and most was run in state cooperatives. Initially the
government refused to listen, but the depth of the crisis and the demands of
organized farmers created some space for change. Through reform, the
government decentralized farm management. The land remains in government
hands, but now it is also available with usufruct rights to tenants, who
can invest in the soil and pass the land onto their children.
But that took the farmers only so far. So some of the countrys agronomists,
plant breeders, soil scientists, and hydrologists (Cuba has 2 percent of
Latin Americas population but 11 percent of its scientists) found
themselves being put to use by Cuban peasants in the fields. Their task:
figure out how to farm without the fossil-fuel products upon which the
countrys agricultural systems had become dependent.
With no fertilizer, pesticide, or herbicide, and no means to import
substitute chemicals, many in the scientific community landed on
agro-ecology. To understand what agro-ecology is, it helps first to
understand why todays agriculture is called industrial. Modern farming
turns fields into factories. Inorganic fertilizer adds nitrogen, potassium,
and phosphorous to the soil; pesticides kill anything that crawls;
herbicides nuke anything green and unwantedall to create an assembly line
that spits out a single crop. This is modern monoculture.
Agro-ecology uses natures far more complex systems to do the same thing
more efficiently and without the chemistry set. Nitrogen-fixing beans are
grown instead of inorganic fertilizer; flowers are used to attract
beneficial insects to manage pests; weeds are crowded out with more
intensive planting. The result is a sophisticated polyculturethat is, it
produces many crops simultaneously, instead of just one.
In Cuba, peasants encouraged scientists to adopt this approach. One of their
most important ideas, borrowed from elsewhere in Central America, was a
model of knowledge diffusion called Campesino a Campesinopeasant to
peasant. Farmers share their results and ideas with one another and with
scientists, which has helped agro-ecological systems spread.
So has it worked? Thats up for debate. The Cuban vice minister of the
economy and planning ministry reportedly said in February 2007 that 84
percent of the countrys food was importednot terribly encouraging, if we
are looking at Cuba to foretell our agricultural future. But a recent paper
by UC-Berkeleys Miguel A. Altieri and the University of Matanzas Fernando
R. Funes-Monzote suggests that while the country still imports almost all
its wheat (a crop that doesnt do well in the Caribbean), it now produces
the majority of its fresh fruit and vegetableseven much of its meat. In
2007, Cubans produced more food while using one-quarter of the chemicals as
they did in 1988.
Agro-ecology is particularly valuable in years when disaster strikes the
island. After Hurricane Ike flattened Cuba in 2008, a research team found
that both traditional plantain monocultures and agro-ecological farms were
devastated. But there were striking differences: Monocultures lost about 75
percent of tree cover, where agro-ecological farms lost 60 percent. On
agro-ecological farms, tall plantainsa staple of the Caribbean dietwere
often righted by the families working the land. By contrast, on conventional
farms, the seasonal labor force arrived on the scene too late to save the
plants. When trees were beyond salvage in the polyculture farms, crops lower
down in the canopy thrived. By contrast, in the monoculture, the only things
that flourished in the gaps between trees were weeds.
About four months after the storm, strongly integrated agro-ecological farms
were nearly back to full production. It took conventional farms an
additional two months to spring back.
Yet all is not well in the Cuban food system.
For many, especially government officials, choosing agro-ecology wasnt a
red-blooded Communist decision. It was a practical one. They are quite ready
for an industrial-agricultural relapse if the occasion arises. Recently,
they have had an unlikely enabler: Hugo Chávez. In exchange for the 31,000
Cuban doctors who are treating Venezuelans, Cuba receives 100,000 barrels of
oil a day, plus a great deal of chemical fertilizer. As a result, the parts
of the country untouched by agro-ecology are starting to spray and sow like
its the 1980s again.
At odds arent just two different farming systems, but two different social
approaches. On one hand, in Cuba and around the world, is industrial
agriculture. In this top-down, command-and-control model, knowledge,
fertilizers, seed, and land are all fed into the black box that is the farm.
Wait long enough, and food comes out the other end.
On the other hand, theres agro-ecology, in which farmers are innovators and
educators, soil can be built over generations, and the natural environment
can be bent with, rather than broken.
Climate change has already reduced global wheat harvests by 5 percent, and
food prices are predicted to double by 2030. Cubas example is both
instructive and frustrating. Technical innovations in Cuban agriculture
point to the kinds of thinking needed to address the future: moving away
from monoculture and understanding the value of complex, integrated systems.
The trouble is that this also means a change in the mindset of governments
and scientists schooled in last centurys agriculture. If thats a lesson
the rest of the world is ready for, Cuban peasant organizing could well
light the way to the future, even if their automobiles are stuck in the
past.
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid. Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
Farmers in Cuba. (photo: AFP/Getty Images)
https://newrepublic.com/article/125539/cuba-can-teach-us-food-climate-change
https://newrepublic.com/article/125539/cuba-can-teach-us-food-climate-change
What Cuba Can Teach Us About Food and Climate Change
By Raj Patel, New Republic
02 January 16
After the Cold War, Cuba faced many of the agricultural challenges that the
rest of the world is now anticipating.
he Studebakers plying up and down Havanas boardwalk arent the best
advertisement for dynamism and innovation. But if you want to see what
tomorrows fossil-fuel-free, climate-change-resilient, high-tech farming
looks like, there are few places on earth like the Republic of Cuba.
Under the Warsaw Pact, Cuba sent rum and sugar to the red side of the Iron
Curtain. In exchange, it received food, oil, machinery, and as many
petrochemicals as it could shake a stick at. From the Missile Crisis to the
twilight of the Soviet Union, Cuba was one of the largest importers of
agricultural chemicals in Latin America. But when the Iron Curtain fell, the
supply lines were cut, and tractors rusted in the fields.
Unable to afford the fertilizers and pesticides that 20th-century
agriculture had taken for granted, the country faced extreme weather events
and a limit to the land and water it could use to grow food. The rest of the
world will soon face many of the same problems: In the coming decade,
according to the OECD, well see higher fuel and fertilizer costs, more
variable climate patterns, and limits to arable land that will drive cereal
prices 20 percent higher and hike meat prices by 30 percentand thats just
the beginning. Policymakers can find inspirational and salutary ideas about
how to confront this crisis in Cuba, the reluctant laboratory for
21st-century agriculture.
Cuban officials faced the crisis clumsily. They didnt know how to transform
an economy geared toward sweetening Eastern Europe into one that could feed
folk at home. Agronomists had been schooled in the virtues of large-scale
industrial collective agriculture. When the industrial part became
impossible, they insisted on yet more collectivization. The dramatic decline
in crop production between 1990 and 1994, during which the average Cuban
lost 20 pounds, was known as the Special Period. Cubans have a line in
comedy as dark as their rum.
Cuban peasants proved more enterprising than the government and demanded
change. First, they wanted control over land. The state had owned 79 percent
of arable land, and most was run in state cooperatives. Initially the
government refused to listen, but the depth of the crisis and the demands of
organized farmers created some space for change. Through reform, the
government decentralized farm management. The land remains in government
hands, but now it is also available with usufruct rights to tenants, who
can invest in the soil and pass the land onto their children.
But that took the farmers only so far. So some of the countrys agronomists,
plant breeders, soil scientists, and hydrologists (Cuba has 2 percent of
Latin Americas population but 11 percent of its scientists) found
themselves being put to use by Cuban peasants in the fields. Their task:
figure out how to farm without the fossil-fuel products upon which the
countrys agricultural systems had become dependent.
With no fertilizer, pesticide, or herbicide, and no means to import
substitute chemicals, many in the scientific community landed on
agro-ecology. To understand what agro-ecology is, it helps first to
understand why todays agriculture is called industrial. Modern farming
turns fields into factories. Inorganic fertilizer adds nitrogen, potassium,
and phosphorous to the soil; pesticides kill anything that crawls;
herbicides nuke anything green and unwantedall to create an assembly line
that spits out a single crop. This is modern monoculture.
Agro-ecology uses natures far more complex systems to do the same thing
more efficiently and without the chemistry set. Nitrogen-fixing beans are
grown instead of inorganic fertilizer; flowers are used to attract
beneficial insects to manage pests; weeds are crowded out with more
intensive planting. The result is a sophisticated polyculturethat is, it
produces many crops simultaneously, instead of just one.
In Cuba, peasants encouraged scientists to adopt this approach. One of their
most important ideas, borrowed from elsewhere in Central America, was a
model of knowledge diffusion called Campesino a Campesinopeasant to
peasant. Farmers share their results and ideas with one another and with
scientists, which has helped agro-ecological systems spread.
So has it worked? Thats up for debate. The Cuban vice minister of the
economy and planning ministry reportedly said in February 2007 that 84
percent of the countrys food was importednot terribly encouraging, if we
are looking at Cuba to foretell our agricultural future. But a recent paper
by UC-Berkeleys Miguel A. Altieri and the University of Matanzas Fernando
R. Funes-Monzote suggests that while the country still imports almost all
its wheat (a crop that doesnt do well in the Caribbean), it now produces
the majority of its fresh fruit and vegetableseven much of its meat. In
2007, Cubans produced more food while using one-quarter of the chemicals as
they did in 1988.
Agro-ecology is particularly valuable in years when disaster strikes the
island. After Hurricane Ike flattened Cuba in 2008, a research team found
that both traditional plantain monocultures and agro-ecological farms were
devastated. But there were striking differences: Monocultures lost about 75
percent of tree cover, where agro-ecological farms lost 60 percent. On
agro-ecological farms, tall plantainsa staple of the Caribbean dietwere
often righted by the families working the land. By contrast, on conventional
farms, the seasonal labor force arrived on the scene too late to save the
plants. When trees were beyond salvage in the polyculture farms, crops lower
down in the canopy thrived. By contrast, in the monoculture, the only things
that flourished in the gaps between trees were weeds.
About four months after the storm, strongly integrated agro-ecological farms
were nearly back to full production. It took conventional farms an
additional two months to spring back.
Yet all is not well in the Cuban food system.
For many, especially government officials, choosing agro-ecology wasnt a
red-blooded Communist decision. It was a practical one. They are quite ready
for an industrial-agricultural relapse if the occasion arises. Recently,
they have had an unlikely enabler: Hugo Chávez. In exchange for the 31,000
Cuban doctors who are treating Venezuelans, Cuba receives 100,000 barrels of
oil a day, plus a great deal of chemical fertilizer. As a result, the parts
of the country untouched by agro-ecology are starting to spray and sow like
its the 1980s again.
At odds arent just two different farming systems, but two different social
approaches. On one hand, in Cuba and around the world, is industrial
agriculture. In this top-down, command-and-control model, knowledge,
fertilizers, seed, and land are all fed into the black box that is the farm.
Wait long enough, and food comes out the other end.
On the other hand, theres agro-ecology, in which farmers are innovators and
educators, soil can be built over generations, and the natural environment
can be bent with, rather than broken.
Climate change has already reduced global wheat harvests by 5 percent, and
food prices are predicted to double by 2030. Cubas example is both
instructive and frustrating. Technical innovations in Cuban agriculture
point to the kinds of thinking needed to address the future: moving away
from monoculture and understanding the value of complex, integrated systems.
The trouble is that this also means a change in the mindset of governments
and scientists schooled in last centurys agriculture. If thats a lesson
the rest of the world is ready for, Cuban peasant organizing could well
light the way to the future, even if their automobiles are stuck in the
past.
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
