--S-A-- City Gardens Abound- 70% Organic in Cuba

[Guest guest]

& nbsp;These kind of gardens are quite popular in Montreal (Canada). By the way

pesticides in Quebec are banned for residential use (outside areas), so if

you're stupid enough to poison yourself, you couldn't at least poison your

neighbors...

 

--- On Wed, 6/11/08, Desert Sky & lt;desertskynm & gt; wrote:

Desert Sky & lt;desertskynm & gt;

& lt; & lt; --S-A-- & gt; & gt; City Gardens Abound- 70% Organic in Cuba

,

,

 

Wednesday, June 11, 2008, 5:06 PM

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cuba's Urban Agrarians Flourish City Gardens Abound On Island

Nation, Where 70% Of Vegetables And Herbs Are Organic http://www.cbsnews.

com/stories/ 2008/06/04/ world/main415465 0.shtml

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(CBS) This story was written by CBS News producer Portia Siegelbaum in Havana.

 

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" Buy local. Eat seasonal. Eat organic. " All now commonplace admonitions in the

United States.

 

 

 

But while none of these slogans are household words in Cuba, 70 percent of the

vegetables and herbs grown on the island today are organic and the urban gardens

where they are raised are usually within walking distance of those who will

consume them. So in one blow Cuba reduced the use of fossil fuels in the

production and transportation of food. And they began doing this nearly 20 years

ago.

 

 

 

The island nation’s move to organic and sustainable farming did not arise from

its environmental consciousness, although there was an element of that also. The

main reason was the beginning of the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989,

Cuba’s only source of petroleum and main trading partner at that time.

 

 

 

Overnight long lines formed at gas stations that all too often ran out before

all their customers could fill up. Traffic was virtually non-existent. Chinese

“Flying Pigeon” bicycles replaced both private and public transportation.

 

 

 

“Puestos” as Cubans call the produce section of their rationed grocery stores

displayed only empty bins as agriculture ground to a halt. Chemical pesticides

and fertilizers vanished. Tractors became relics of a former time. Oxen pulled

the plows that furrowed the fields.

 

 

 

Finding food for the dinner table became a day-long drudge. Cubans visibly lost

weight. The communist youth daily, Juventud Rebelde, ran articles on edible

weeds. Daily caloric intake dropped to about 1600 calories.

 

 

 

Organic agriculture " made its appearance at that moment as a necessity and that

necessity helped us to advance, to consolidate and expand more or less uniformly

in all 169 municipalities, " says Adolfo Rodriguez. At 62, he is Cuba’s top

urban agrarian, with 43 years experience in agriculture.

 

 

 

He says there are now 300,000 people employed directly in urban agriculture

without counting those who are raising organic produce in their backyards as

part of a State-encouraged grassroots movement. In all, Rodriguez claims nearly

a million people are getting their hands dirty organically.

 

 

 

With 76 percent of Cuba’s population of just under 11 million living in cities,

the importance of this form of farming cannot be over emphasized, says

Rodriguez.

 

 

 

I think that Cuba’s urban agriculture has come to stay.

 

Adolfo Rodriguez, urban agrarian

 

 

 

The urban gardens have been dubbed " organoponicos. " Those located in

never-developed empty lots primarily consist of raised beds. More complicated

are those created in the space left by a collapsed building, not uncommon in

cities like Havana where much of the housing is in a very deteriorated state and

where all it takes is a heavy tropical rainfall followed by relentless sunshine

to bring down a structure.

 

 

 

" We have to truck in the soil, " before anything can be planted, explains

Rodriguez. " The basic issue is restoring fertility, the importance of producing

compost, organic fertilizers, humus created by worms, " he says.

 

 

 

In a majority of cases the fruits and vegetables are freshly picked every

morning and go on sale just with a few feet of where they grew. Only in

exceptional cases, such as the densely population municipality of Old Havana (as

the colonial section of the capital is named) do the organic fruits and

vegetables travel a kilometer or so by a tricycle or horse drawn cart to reach

consumers.

 

 

 

Lucky are the Havana residents who live near the organoponico at 44th Street and

Fifth Avenue. Occupying nearly an entire city block, it grows a wide variety of

vegetables, fruits and herbs, as well as ornamental plants. It will even sell

fresh basil shoots for customers to plant in their own herb garden. On a recent

day, customers were offered the following fresh produce at reasonable prices:

mangos, plantains, basil, parsley, lettuce, garlic, celery, scallions, collard

greens, black beans, watermelon, tomatoes, malanga, spinach and sweet potatoes.

 

 

 

Luckily for Cubans in general, organic here is not equivalent to expensive.

Overhead costs are low. The produce is sold from simple aluminum kiosks, signs

listing the day’s offer and prices are handmade, electricity is used only for

irrigation, and no transportation other than walking from the raised beds to the

kiosks is involved. The result? Everything is fresh, local and available.

 

 

 

Convincing Cubans to buy this produce, especially the less familiar vegetables,

so as to prepare earth friendly meals, presented a hurdle. The ideal meal on the

island includes roast pork, rice and beans and yucca. A lettuce and tomato salad

was popular. But the idea of vegetable side dishes or an all vegetarian meal was

inconceivable to most.

 

 

 

" We’re cultivating some 40-plus species but you have to know who your customers

are, " says Rodriguez. " We can’t plant a lot of broccoli right now because its

not going to sell but we’re making progress. " For example, he notes, in the

beginning practically no one bought spinach. Now, all the spinach planted is

sold. Persuading people to eat carrots, according to Rodriguez, was an uphill

battle. " We had to begin supplying them to the daycare centers,” so as to

develop a taste for this most common of root vegetables.

 

 

 

The " queen " of the winter crop is lettuce. The spring/summer " queen " is the

Chinese string bean. Cuba’s blazing summer sun doesn’t allow for growing produce

out of its season, even under cover, except in rare circumstances.

 

 

 

The saving of heritage fruits, vegetables and even animals has also gotten a

boost from the urban agrarian movement. The chayote, a fleshy, pear-shaped

single-seeded fruit, had virtually disappeared from the market. Now, Rodriguez

says, 130 of Cuba’s 169 municipalities are growing the fruit that many remember

from their grandmother’s kitchen repertoire in which it was treated as a

vegetable, often stuffed and baked.

 

 

 

" We are working to rescue fruit orchards that are in danger of extinction, "

stresses Rodriguez. " We’ve planted fields with fruit species that many of

today’s children have never even seen, such as the sapote. To save these species

we’ve created specialized provincial botanical gardens, " he explains.

 

 

 

Similarly, the urban agrarian movement is rescuing native animal species such as

the Creole goat and the cubalaya chicken, the only native Cuban poultry species.

 

 

 

Currently spiraling global food prices are hitting the island hard. Cuba has

been importing just over 80 percent of the food consumed domestically. The

government is making more land and supplies available to farmers and this may

well include chemical fertilizers and pesticides in an attempt to greatly reduce

this foreign dependency.

 

 

 

Rodriguez does not believe this push to quickly increase agricultural output

will negatively impact on the urban organic movement. Even during the 1990s,

known in Cuba as the " Special Period,” he says, the potato crop continued to

receive chemical pesticides and fertilizers. And even today, the 30 percent of

the non-organic produce includes, for example, large-scale plantings of tomatoes

for industrial processing.

 

 

 

" I think that Cuba’s urban agriculture has come to stay, " concludes Rodriguez.

" That there is a little increase in the application of fertilizers and

pesticides for specific crops is normal but that’s not to say that the country

is going to shift away from organic farming, to turn our organic gardens into

non-organic ones. "

 

 

 

By Portia Siegelbaum

 

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