Earth Equity News

The Vegetable Gardeners of Havana. By Sarah Murch, BBC, August 22, 2009. "Between 1960 and 1989, a national policy of intensive specialized agriculture radically transformed Cuban farming into high-input mono-culture in which tobacco, sugar, and other cash crops were grown on large state farms. Cuba exchanged its abundant produce for cheap, imported subsidized oil from the old Eastern Bloc. In fact, oil was so cheap, Cuba pursued a highly industrialized fuel-thirsty form of agriculture -- not so different from the kind of farming we see in much of the West today. But after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the oil supply rapidly dried up, and, almost overnight, Cuba faced a major food crisis. Already affected by a US trade embargo, Cuba by necessity had to go back to basics to survive -- rediscovering low-input self-reliant farming...

"With no petrol for tractors, oxen had to plough the land. With no oil-based fertilizers or pesticides, farmers had to turn to natural and organic replacements. Today, about 300,000 oxen work on farms across the country and there are now more than 200 biological control centers which produce a whole host of biological agents in fungi, bacteria and beneficial insects. Havana has almost 200 urban allotments -- known as organiponicos -- providing four million tons of vegetables every year -- helping the country to become 90% self-sufficient in fruit and vegetables."