No subject

more than $350 million, with the highest value, $382 million, in 2004.
Even with reduced U.S. exports of food and agricultural products to
Cuba in 2005 and 2006, the United States has remained Cuba's most
important food and agricultural product supplier accounting for more
than one-fourth of the country's total food and agricultural imports.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Cuba's total food and agricultural imports almost doubled between 2000 and =
2006.

The United States now supplies about 30 percent of Cuba's food and
agricultural import requirements. This share has fallen from 36
percent in 2004, when Cuba imported more food and agricultural
products from the United States and fewer total food and agricultural
products overall.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

During the past 15 years, Cuba has become an increasingly important
Caribbean vacation destination. Despite the inability of U.S. citizens
to travel as tourists to Cuba, in 2006 an estimated 2.1 million
tourists visited Cuba, mostly from Canada or Europe. This ranks Cuba
as the fifth most important Latin American tourist destination, and it
represents more than 10 percent of all tourist arrivals in the
Caribbean [table 1]. The tourist industry generated gross earnings of
$2.4 billion for the Cuban economy in 2006.

Table 1: Cuba was the fifth most important tourist destination in
Latin America in 2006.
Top Five Latin American Tourism Destinations in 2006

Rank
County
Million Tourists

1
Mexico
21.9

2
Brazil
5.3

3
Dominican Republic
3.7

4
Argentina
3.5

5
Cuba
2.1

In the early 1990s, when the Cuban tourism industry was just reviving,
only about 300,000 tourists visited the nation and earnings were only
$240 million. The explosive growth in Cuban tourism during this
relatively short time period reflects a rate of expansion in tourism
rarely experienced anywhere in the world.

In the early 1990s, only about 12 percent of the products and services
for the tourism trade were provided through domestic production, with
the balance being imported. Nearly all of the food products, beer, and
bottled water needed for tourist hotels and restaurants were imported.
Today, through a combination of policies to stimulate domestic
production and assistance from foreign firms and investors, this
factor has been significantly improved. Now between two-thirds and
three-quarters of Cuba's tourist hotel and restaurant needs are met
through national production. Some high-value food products continue to
be imported, however, for the tourist trade.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Cuban Imports. A recent Cuban press article contained a surprisingly
candid observation by a high-level Cuban Ministry of Agriculture
official that 84 percent of all food consumed in Cuba is imported.
Clearly, the significant transformation in Cuba's agricultural and
food system since the dissolution of the former Soviet Union goes
beyond production agriculture.

Cuba's food and agricultural imports have fluctuated widely since the
late 1980s [fig. 18, and Appendix 2, Table 1]. The dramatic decline in
Cuba's total merchandise and agricultural imports in the early 1990s
was driven by the collapse in the value of Cuban exports (most notably
sugar) following Cuba's loss of its preferential trading relationships
with the COMECON (Council for Mutual Economic Assistance =96 the former
Soviet network established in an effort to integrate the economies of
eastern Europe) nations and its lack of access to external financing.
Government efforts to avoid food shortages after 1990 explain Cuba's
agricultural import patterns; despite a large proportionate decrease
in value, agricultural imports became an increasing percentage of
Cuba's total imports as the government struggled to maintain imported
food supplies. This overall decrease in agricultural imports, coupled
with rapidly declining domestic agricultural production volumes,
brought about the early 1990s food shortages that reached near
catastrophic proportions in 1994, leading to the "rafters" crisis that
summer.

As the Cuban economy began a slow recovery after 1994, so too did
Cuba's agricultural imports, and in 1995, the value of Cuba's
agricultural imports increased appreciably on a percentage basis. This
trend continued, and in 2004, the value of Cuban agricultural imports
slightly exceeded 1989 values. The growth in food and agricultural
imports continued in 2005 and 2006.

Despite the many changes that have taken place in Cuba during the past
50 years, Cuba's agricultural import mix changed relatively little
during that period. Rice, grain, and oilseed products were Cuba's most
important agricultural imports in the 1950s. That remains true today,
although dairy products and poultry meat are also important imports at
the present time.

Far more significant for U.S. exporters is that in only two years, the
United States went from being a non-participant in Cuba's agricultural
import market to being Cuba's largest supplier of these commodities.
Despite passage of the Trade Sanctions Reform and Export Enhancement
Act (TSRA) in 2000 which allows U.S. firms to export agricultural
products (and medicine) to Cuba, Fidel Castro initially chose not to
purchase from U.S. firms because of TSRA's cash sale requirements and
because the legislation does not allow Cuba to export to the United
States. Following the damage inflicted by Hurricane Michelle on Cuba's
agricultural sector in November 2001, however, the Cuban government
began purchasing from U.S. companies late that year, and by 2002, the
United States became Cuba's most important supplier of imported
agricultural products.

<http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/apr/04/organics.food>
Cuba's organic revolution

The collapse of the Soviet Union forced Cuba to become self-reliant in
its agricultural production. The country's innovative solution was
urban organic farming, the creation of 'organoponicos'. But will it
survive a change of government? Ed Ewing reports

Friday April 4 2008

Below the high ceilings of the Telegraph hotel in Bayamo, south-east
Cuba, the barman is mixing a perfect mojito. Rum, sugarcane juice,
lime, carbonated water, and a whole sprig of mint.

But the key ingredient isn't any old mint. This is mint, as the Cubans
say, "from the patio". Or at least, from the hotel's own rooftop
garden.

"It's not very big," says the barman, "just two boxes." But it's where
the hotel grows all its mint for its mojitos. And if there's a run on
mojitos, what then? "El organiponico," he replies. An organic
vegetable garden on the outskirts of Bayamo has all the mint you could
wish for, he explains.

Organiponicos are the most visible part of Cuba's unique answer to a
very serious problem =96 how to feed its people. But with Fidel Castro's
resignation last month, could this unique system of organic urban
agriculture =96 the world's largest example - be under threat?

Before the revolution nearly half the agricultural land in Cuba was
owned by 1% of the people. After it, agriculture was nationalised and
mechanised along Soviet lines. Trade with the once great superpower
meant swapping sugarcane, which Cuba produced in industrial abundance,
for cheap food and materials like machinery and petrochemical
fertilisers.
Agricultural revolution

But when the USSR collapsed in 1990/91, Cuba's ability to feed itself
collapsed with it. "Within a year the country had lost 80% of its
trade," explains the Cuba Organic Support Group (COSG). Over 1.3m
tonnes of chemical fertilisers a year were lost. Fuel for transporting
produce from the fields to the towns dried up. People started to go
hungry. The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (UNFAO) estimated
that calorie intake plunged from 2,600 a head in the late 1980s to
between 1,000 and 1,500 by 1993.

Radical action was needed, and quickly. "Cuba had to produce twice as
much food, with less than half the chemical inputs," according to the
COSG. Land was switched from export crops to food production, and
tractors were switched for oxen. People were encouraged to move from
the city to the land and organic farming methods were introduced.

"Integrated pest management, crop rotation, composting and soil
conservation were implemented," says the COSG. The country had to
become expert in techniques like worm composting and biopesticides.
"Worms and worm farm technology is now a Cuban export," says Dr
Stephen Wilkinson, assistant director of the International Institute
for the Study of Cuba.

Thus, the unique system of organoponicos, or urban organic farming,
was started. "Organoponicos are really gardens," explains Wilkinson,
"they use organic methods and meet local needs."

"Almost overnight," says the COSG, the ministry of agriculture
established an urban gardening culture. By 1995 Havana had 25,000
huertos =96 allotments, farmed by families or small groups =96 and dozens
of larger-scale organoponicos, or market gardens. The immediate crisis
of hunger was over.

Now, gardens for food take up 3.4% of urban land countrywide, and 8%
of land in Havana. Cuba produced 3.2m tonnes of organic food in urban
farms in 2002 and, UNFAO says, food intake is back at 2,600 calories a
day.

Organoponico plaza

A visit to Havana's largest organoponico, the three-hectare
Organoponico Plaza, which lies a stone's throw from the city's Plaza
de la Revoluci=F3n and the desk of Raul Castro, confirms that the scheme
is doing well. Rows of strikingly neat irrigated raised beds are home
to seasonal crops of lettuces, spring onions, chives, garlic and
parsley.

Guava and noni fruit trees provide shade around the perimeter, while
on the far side compost piles sit next to plastic tunnels used to
raise seedlings. Outside in the shop, signs extol the virtues of
eating your greens.

The shop is open only on Mondays. Produce is sold by the people who
work the garden (they keep 50% of sales, so are motivated to produce a
lot) to the people who live nearby. In this case, the organoponico
serves an estate that wouldn't look out of place in Tower Hamlets or
Easterhouse. Yet inside, butterflies flit and the head gardener, Toni,
turns sod like he is digging at Prince Charles's Highgrove estate.

A success then? "In terms of improving the diet of the population it
has had a beneficial effect," says Wilkinson.

"And it has been a success in terms of meeting some of the food
security needs," he says, "but it has not resolved the problem since
the island still imports a great deal of food."

And change is on the horizon, which might be good for living
standards, but not so good for Cuba's commitment to pesticide-free
food.

The US trade embargo is losing its "symbolic meaning", says Julie M
Bunck, assistant professor of political science at the University of
Louisville and author of Fidel Castro and the Quest for a
Revolutionary Culture in Cuba, and as that happens, "Cuba will evolve,
embrace the market in some way, begin to produce and buy and sell
normally."

General farming will "most likely" move away from organic methods says
Wilkinson. Farming on a large scale after all, he says, has seen a
reduction in pesticide and fertiliser use mainly due to "financial
constraints, not choice".

But, he notes: "Organoponicos fulfil a local and specific need and are
unlikely to disappear."

He adds: "The commitment to organics in agriculture may not be 100%
because of climate and the need to boost production. But policies that
encourage environmental protection will continue so long as the
present government remains."

When that changes, Cuba's unique experiment with organic farming will
change too.

This article was first published on guardian.co.uk on Friday April 04
2008. It was last updated at 01:02 on April 05 2008.

<http://earthtrends.wri.org/updates/node/306>
Changes on the Horizon for Cuba's Sustainable Agriculture
Submitted by Lisa Raffensperger on Mon, 2008-05-05 15:44.

Cuba's agricultural system was turned on its head by the fall of the
Soviet Union in 1991. It was one of the most dramatic agricultural
collapses of recent history--suddenly Cuba's heavily-subsidized
exports to Russia and East Germany disappeared, the large state
farming operations had no fuel or spare parts to keep their thousands
of tractors running, and the heavy chemical inputs Cuba had become
accustomed to were no longer available. Almost overnight, Cuba's
agriculture radically transformed.

Most large state farms were broken up into smaller privatized
cooperatives to increase yields. By necessity these private
cooperatives were semi-organic, using very little or no pesticides and
fertilizers (see figure 1). Instead of tractors, resourceful Cuban
farmers turned to oxen, the "peasant" means of plowing which had been
largely abandoned in the 1960s. As a side benefit, plowing by oxen
teams created less soil compaction and leaching of nutrients, creating
healthier soil without fertilizer. And because technological solutions
weren't an option any longer, Cuban agricultural scientists devoted
their research to low-tech, sustainable alternatives. Cuban farmers
began using beneficial insects, soil bacteria, crop rotation, and
intercropping--many of the same innovations that U.S. organic farmers
were concurrently experimenting with for the first time--to manage
pests and increase productivity.

Figure 1. Cuba's Fertilizer Use Intensity, 1961-2002
<http://earthtrends.wri.org/images/cuba_fertilizer.jpg>
Source: EarthTrends, 2008

Cuba's switch, according to some, was the world's largest conversion
[LINK: <http://www.multinationalmonitor.org/hyper/issues/1994/11/mm1194_06.=
html>]
from traditional agriculture to semi-organic farming. It wasn't a
perfect solution, to be sure. Food production per capita dropped
drastically in 1993 and has only recently begun to approach the food
production of the 1960s to 1980s (see figure 2). Leading the way in
the recent increase are the private cooperatives, which have been far
more successful than state-owned farms. The government owns about 65
percent of tilled land in Cuba; private farmers and cooperatives own
the other 35 percent. But on just 35 percent of the land, these
farmers now produce 60 percent [LINK:
<http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23907266/>] of Cuba's total agricultural
output.

Figure 2. Cuba's Food Production Per Capita Index, 1961-2005
<http://earthtrends.wri.org/images/cuba_food_index.jpg>
Source: EarthTrends, 2008

Need for More Food

Still, many people in Cuba aren't getting enough to eat, and the
problem is twofold [LINK:
<http://www.utexas.edu/coc/kut/latinousa/stationservices/podcast/2008/04/04=
18_01_lusa_podcast.mp3>].
For one thing, the government stores where residents can spend their
ration cards often run out of staple foods. And the more recent
additions of free market stalls, where farmers can sell their surplus
after meeting the government quota, have prices too high for many
average Cubans to afford. Essentially, to feed the country the
successful cooperative system needs to be grown even more.

In just a few months of acting as Cuba's president, Raul Castro has
espoused this vision as well. In many ways his proposals are just a
continuation of the privatization that was begun in 1993.
Specifically, there are three primary improvements in cooperative
farming that Castro has begun to address:

* More local control.
Cooperatives have been hamstrung by lack of autonomy [LINK:
<http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/FE487>], as the government has controlled
access to farming supplies and the conditions under which the produce
can be sold. But this is beginning to change. Already farmers can buy
more supplies and can sell produce directly [LINK:
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/feedarticle?id=3D7495293>], and governmental
restructuring has put more decision-making power in the hands of
"municipal agriculture delegations," [LINK:
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/feedarticle?id=3D7495293>] decentralizing
agricultural oversight.

* More resources.
Castro announced in late March that private farmers will now be able
to lease state-owned land for cultivation. The long mismanagement of
state farms has caused half of the nation's arable land [LINK:
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/feedarticle?id=3D7495293>] to be
underutilized or fallow. In addition, to stimulate production the
state has raised prices it pays growers and begun selling herbicides
and fertilizers [LINK:
<http://www.forbes.com/home/business/2008/04/02/cuba-peso-tech-cx_0403oxfor=
d.html>]
to private farmers, the sale of which was always seen as anathema to
socialist orthodoxy.

* More freedom.
Cuba's deputy agriculture minister announced in March [LINK:
<http://uk.reuters.com/article/globalNews/idUKN0332103720080403?pageNumber=
=3D2&virtualBrandChannel=3D0>]
that public cooperatives would be granted more credit and more
decision-making power in what to produce and where to sell it. For
instance, private and public sugar cooperatives were told that once
they met a production quota, extra land could be used to grow whatever
they wanted--a departure from prior policy, which was that 80 percent
of surplus crops grown [LINK: <http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/FE487>] had to
be sold to the government at very low prices.

Another Transformation on the Horizon

However, many Cubans still feel their agriculture is hurt by U.S.
embargo, and political changes in the United States may make a lifting
of the embargo in sight. That change would position Cuba to once again
transform its agriculture, but in the opposite direction from
1993--toward large industrial farms like the ones common in the United
States.

Those farms, and the influx of subsidized U.S. food, may be the answer
to the food problem that has plagued Cuba for decades, finally making
food affordable for all its citizens. But it would also be a premature
ending of Cuba's grand experiment in sustainable farming, just as
productivity has nearly reached its previous highs. And the experiment
would end, potentially, on the eve of better U.S.-Cuba relations, when
much of Cuban farmers' and scientists' accumulated knowledge in
sustainable farming could finally have an open route to being shared
with American growers.

So far, reforms are mostly promises and not realities, and the future
of the embargo is highly speculative. But as they take shape, Cuba's
agriculture--as in 1993--may soon become unrecognizable, almost
overnight.

--=20
Yoshie
<http://montages.blogspot.com/>