Cuba

This next chapter is primarily sourced from my talks with Andy Gaertner, who visited Cuba while in the Peace Corps. The numerical statistics were gleaned from numerous sources. These numbers would vary widely from source to source. Based on the bias of the sources and the varying contexts from which they were presenting the numbers, I gave them a best guess. Connected to what Andy was saying in our talks I believe the numbers I present here are accurate.

Cuba

After the big Soviet pull out of 1989 and U.S. embargo, Cuba found itself not able to internally support the mechanized system of farming it had become dependent on. There was immediate shortage and hunger. There was no fuel to transport the food.  Nor was there fuel to refrigerate the food in order to store and transport it. Havana, the capital of Cuba, a city of 2 million people at the time, had no way to feed its populace.  

For three years the people of Havana had hardship. During this time they started to figure out their own problems. People concentrated on producing for themselves what they needed. The government set up a system of extension workers to help urban gardeners get the knowledge and supplies they needed. The government also made decisions that had to be followed. All vacant land was appropriated and made available for food production. Scientists were tasked to devise systems for urban agriculture that would maximize efficiency and yield. Within five years after the Soviet pull out the crisis had abated.

Currently, the population of Havana is roughly 2.2 million people. They are fed but they have less food than before. Their diet is limited to what is available at the time. There is less space to live as the land is necessary for food production. Thirty percent of Havana’s available land is under cultivation and is made up of two hundred gardens. These gardens produce seven crops a year and up to ninety percent of Havana’s fruits and vegetables, all from within the city’s borders. Sixty percent of Havana’s total food is produced inside the city. Forty percent, mostly animal products, comes from the countryside. Imagine a city the size of Houston, Texas (2.2 million), and a slightly larger Chicago (2.8 million), doing the same.

However, Cuba is a tropical country. In the upper Midwest, winters make the seven crops per year an improbable goal. Midwest farming can produce crops year round with the right techniques, technologies and plants that are adapted or indigenous to the area. But, the people would have to make a radical diet change. It would also take an intensive amount of infrastructure to make this kind of system happen, a sustainability problem in and of itself. Can this work here if it had to? Why can’t this process begin before a crisis does happen? Before the infrastructure to build the gardens is difficult to come by? Can the food system change now and not when it is forced to?

Of course. All that needs to happen is for the people to want it to and be willing to do the work.

In Havana, it was theorized that when the crisis of shortage abated, the people in the cities would become less interested in food production. The opposite happened. Interest grew. Since there were no for profit corporate systems controlling food production in Cuba, the people who worked the gardens got to experience the direct benefit of their labor. What this kind of agriculture did was to connect people to their food source - the land. They ate more fresh foods. And, coupled with the physical nature of gardening, walking more and riding bikes because there was no fuel, people became healthier. The use of plants for medicine grew as there weren’t as many pharmaceuticals available. Hospitals practiced less interventions. Currently, the infant mortality rate in Cuba is lower than the United States. All this with much less industry, importation and infrastructure.

Why can’t this be our reality?