{"id":39981,"date":"2013-06-07T18:37:22","date_gmt":"2013-06-07T17:37:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/cubas-other-revolution\/39981\/"},"modified":"2013-06-07T18:37:22","modified_gmt":"2013-06-07T17:37:22","slug":"cubas-other-revolution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/cubas-other-revolution\/","title":{"rendered":"Cuba\u2019s Other Revolution"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cDuring the Special Period\u2019s most difficult years, countless and creative solutions were found by our campesinos and agricultural science researchers. There was one objective and one priority: to recover our agricultural systems and produce what\u2019s necessary to feed ourselves. However, we needed integrating and modeling concepts for the changes that were now indispensable, and we found them in agroecology.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

– Orlando Lugo-Fonte
President of the National Association of Small Farmers of Cuba (1)<\/p>\n

Cuba is the one country in the world that has made the furthest strides, and in the shortest time, in moving from industrial conventional agricultural production to organic farming. This achievement has been celebrated and documented by numerous experts and observers, including land reform scholar Peter Rosset and agroecologist Miguel Altieri, academic bodies like the Latin American Scientific Society of Agroecology (SOCLA), and NGO\u2019s such as Food First and the Worldwatch Institute, and have been the subject of a 2006 documentary, titled The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil (2).<\/p>\n

The country was in a very unusual and critical situation at the beginning of the 1990\u2019s. With the implosion of the Soviet block, the subsidies that Cuba received in the form of food and farm inputs ceased overnight, causing an unprecedented crisis. With the Torricelli and Helms-Burton Acts, passed in 1992 and 1996 respectively, the American embargo tightened its noose around Cuba\u2019s economy, further worsening an already dire scenario. But the Caribbean island nation pulled through by way of a successful transformation of its agricultural model, moving it towards agroecological production largely based on small family farms.<\/p>\n

Back in March in the Colombian city of Medell\u00c3\u00adn I had the great pleasure of spending time with Cuban professors Fernando Funes and Luis V\u00c3\u00a1squez, both of them scientists of international renown and faculty members of SOCLA\u2019s doctoral program (3). Between long walks through the city center and over beers in the Pilarica neighborhood, we talked at length about the challenges of agriculture, ecology and socialism. This article is based on those conversations and on published writings by Funes and other authors.<\/p>\n

Funes says that following the withdrawal of Soviet support, \u201cthe critical situation created in Cuban agriculture propitiated the transformation of the agrarian structure and the reach of a new technological, economic, ecological and social dimension, with the end of achieving food security with new methods and strategies.\u201d (4)<\/p>\n

But before seeking to apply the Cuban experiences to other countries and contexts it is necessary to consider the country\u2019s unique and extraordinary circumstances. The 1959 revolution and subsequent sweeping land reform were a unique happening in Latin American history: the landed ruling class was defeated, uprooted and expelled. The country\u2019s wealth and land were redistributed; and as a result, access to land is not a problem, and all farmers in the country enjoy first-rate free education and health care. Latin America\u2019s land-owning elites, assisted by the murderous US counterinsurgency, have not spared any resources, be they financial, ideological or military, to prevent another Cuban-style revolution in the Western hemisphere.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, many of Cuba\u2019s lessons can be learned and applied in other countries. One of the key elements in the success of agroecology and food sovereignty in Cuba has been the support of the state. The Cuban experience demonstrates that a successful transition to agroecology requires major involvement by the public sector. The country\u2019s organic revolution contradicts the common image of the Cuban government as bureaucratized and lacking in creativity or imagination. If the Cuban state were as inflexible and inefficient as the revolution\u2019s derisive critics make it out to be, it would not have taken the right measures, and in a rapid and decisive manner, to avert a fatal food crisis.<\/p>\n

Among the concrete steps taken by the government are the establishment of 276 centers for the reproduction of entomophages and entomopathogens (organisms that are natural enemies of pests), a National Urban Farming Program with 26 subprograms that span the production of vegetables, medicinal plants, condiments, grains, fruit, and animal breeding (hens, rabbits, sheep, goats, pigs, bees and fish) that are developed throughout the country, and a program for the promotion of ecological agriculture within the National Association of Small Farmers (ANAP).<\/p>\n

Funes explains the fundamentals of this ecological agrarian revolution: \u201cThese advances went from the use of biopesticides and biological controls, to different applications of biofertilizer, compost, earthworm humus, biosoils, animal traction, etc., on a grand scale and in a rapid manner.\u201d The techniques explored and developed also included polyculture, rotation, intelligent use of nitrogen-fixing legumes, and a great variety of ecological solutions for pest and weed problems.<\/p>\n

Along with innovation also came full acknowledgement of ancient traditions of great relevance and usefulness. Says Funes of the Cuban campesino sector\u2019s recovery from the crisis:<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cA mixture of traditional farming practices and organic fertilization common in the Cuban countryside, brought in from Europe by Spanish immigrants centuries back, and appropriate strategies for climate management, phases of the moon and many times even religious beliefs and sayings embedded in peasant wisdom, no doubt permitted this sector to be the one that showed a most convincing recovery- and in the least amount of time- to the crisis of inputs.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

But state action by itself, though necessary, is not enough to carry agroecology forward. This has been proven in Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador, where progressive governments oriented by Bolivariano anti-imperialist ideals fully favor food sovereignty and ecological agriculture and have made of them official state policy. These governments issued directives to this effect to the public universities and agriculture ministries, but nothing happened. Bureaucrats, agronomists and academic scholars raised and formed in the green revolution model of US-style industrial mechanized chemical-intensive farming, simply ignored the dictates from the higher echelons and continued doing what they had always done: promote monocultures and pesticides while ignoring the new agricultural practices and discourses that originated from ecology and grassroots mobilization.<\/p>\n

Not to say that nothing was achieved there. The Andes region is one of the world\u2019s hotbeds of peasant-based agroecological innovation, and Venezuela hosts the Paulo Freire Latin American Institute of Agroecology (IALA). But bureaucratic resistance from the mid-layers of government has thwarted the potential for a truly profound transformation of agriculture. The achievements of these three South American countries pale in comparison with Cuba\u2019s organic revolution. How did Cuba do it?<\/p>\n

Cuba prevented its organic agroecological revolution from suffering a bureaucratic death thanks to a combination of decentralization and participatory models. State enterprises were broken up into Basic Units of Cooperative Production (UBPC). According to Funes, this has given farmers the liberating feeling of being owners of the land they work by giving them real protagonism in decision-making processes, which has resulted in increased productivity. The word he uses is autogesti\u00c3\u00b3n, a Latin American word that describes processes of self-management and enhanced individual autonomy in small-scale enterprises.<\/p>\n

One of the hallmarks of Cuba\u2019s agroecological revolution is the development of innovative and novel participatory methodologies of agricultural research with horizontal processes of discussion, validation and adaptation of new ideas and proposals. These methodologies, which owe much to Paulo Freire\u2019s \u201cPedagogy of the Oppressed\u201d, are known collectively as campesino a campesino (peasant to peasant). Born in the Mesoamerican region in the 1970\u2019s, CAC has revolutionized ecological farming all over Latin America and is spreading all over the world. Its remarkable history is told in Food First director Eric Holt-Gim\u00c3\u00a9nez\u2019s book Campesino a Campesino: Voices from Latin America\u2019s Farmer to Farmer Movement for Sustainable Agriculture (5).<\/p>\n

According to the recent book Revoluci\u00c3\u00b3n Agroecol\u00c3\u00b3gica en Cuba by Peter Rosset et al., \u201cCAC is an energizing methodology, it places the campesino and his\/her family as protagonists of their own destiny; in contrast to classical extensionism- static and demobilizing of the campesino base-, based on the technician as transmitter of knowledge\u2026 it is based on horizontal transmission and the collective construction of knowledge, practices and methods. In other words, it tries to incorporate campesino tradition and innovation in order to add them to the results of scientific research in agroecology.\u201d According to Rosset et al., \u201cagroecology has achieved in little over ten years what the conventional model has never achieved in Cuba or anywhere: produce more with less (foreign exchange, inputs and investment\u201d. (6)<\/p>\n

According to ANAP president Orlando Lugo-Fonte, the most important factor in the success of agroecology in Cuba is \u201cthe Revolution, which gave us, and guaranteed us, property of the land; which developed us educationally, technically and socially; which inculcated in us the values of collectivism, cooperation and solidarity. But, above all, it dignified the men and women of the countryside and made them owners and made them responsible for much more than their parcel. It has made women and men conscious of their responsibility: feeding the people and protecting the environment, so that future generations of Cubans can also eat and have a clean and healthy countryside in which to live.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThanks to all its revolutionary history, which dates back to the XIX century, the Cuban peasantry has accumulated very many experiences\u201d, says Brazil\u2019s Jo\u00c3\u00a3o Pedro St\u00c3\u00a9dile, one of the leaders of his country\u2019s Landless Workers\u2019 Movement (MST). \u201cApart from having gone through the green revolution, it has maintained its people\u2019s revolution alive and has for fifty years been resisting against all aggressions of imperialism. For this, it is today the campesino sector that\u2019s most ideologically and scientifically prepared to help us all campesinos and campesinas of the world to deal with the challenges imposed by capital\u201d. (7)<\/p>\n

But observers should not romanticize or idealize Cuba\u2019s reality. Agroecology in Cuba faces serious challenges and contradictions (8). The government does not intend to do away with conventional industrial farming, and it is pushing ahead with the development of genetically modified crops (9), something that Funes and other Cuban agroecologists have vocally opposed (10). Some in the top levels of the Communist Party view agroecology as no more than a temporary band aid, to be discarded once the Special Period ends. But Funes, V\u00c3\u00a1squez and many other Cuban farmers are convinced that agroecology is the way to go today and will also be the way to go tomorrow. In the words of Funes, \u201cLet\u2019s do organic farming now, not out of necessity but rather with the conviction that it really is the path to take\u201d.<\/p>\n

Carmelo Ruiz-Marrero<\/strong> is a Puerto Rican author, environmental educator and investigative journalist. He is a research associate at the Institute for Social Ecology and director of the Puerto Rico Project on Biosafety. His Twitter feed is @carmeloruiz<\/em><\/p>\n

1) Orlando Lugo-Fonte. Taken from the prologue to Revoluci\u00c3\u00b3n Agroecol\u00c3\u00b3gica en Cuba: El Movimiento Campesino a Campesino de la ANAP en Cuba. B.M. Sosa, A.M. Roque Jaime, D.R. Avila Lozano y P.M. Rosset. First edition published in Cuba in 2010.<\/p>\n

2) Funes et al. \u201cSustainable Agriculture and Resistance: Transforming Food Production in Cuba\u201d Food First Books http:\/\/www.foodfirst.org\/store\/book\/Sustainable_Agriculture_and_Resistance; Ben Block. \u201cTraditional Farmer Knowledge Leads Cuba to Organic Revolution\u201d Worldwatch Institute http:\/\/www.worldwatch.org\/node\/6435; \u201cThe Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil\u201d http:\/\/www.powerofcommunity.org\/cm\/index.php, You can see the whole documentary in: http:\/\/vimeo.com\/8653921<\/p>\n

3) SOCLA PhD program blog http:\/\/doctoradoagroecoudea.wordpress.com\/<\/p>\n

4) Fernando Funes-Monzote. \u201cLa agricultura cubana en camino a la sostenibilidad\u201d. LEISA magazine, July 2001.<\/p>\n

5) http:\/\/www.foodfirst.org\/store\/book\/Campesino_a_Campesino<\/p>\n

6) Revoluci\u00c3\u00b3n Agroecol\u00c3\u00b3gica en Cuba: El Movimiento Campesino a Campesino de la ANAP en Cuba. B.M. Sosa, A.M. Roque Jaime, D.R. Avila Lozano and P.M. Rosset. First edition published in Cuba in 2010.<\/p>\n

7) Jo\u00c3\u00a3o Pedro St\u00c3\u00a9dile. Taken from his prologue for Revoluci\u00c3\u00b3n Agroecol\u00c3\u00b3gica en Cuba: El Movimiento Campesino a Campesino de la ANAP en Cuba. B.M. Sosa, A.M. Roque Jaime, D.R. Avila Lozano and P.M. Rosset.<\/p>\n

8) Miguel Altieri and Fernando Funes Monzote \u201cThe paradox of Cuban agriculture\u201d Monthly Review, January 2012 http:\/\/monthlyreview.org\/2012\/01\/01\/the-paradox-of-cuban-agriculture<\/p>\n

9) Information resources on genetically modified crops in Cuba compiled by the Puerto Rico Project on Biosafety. http:\/\/bioseguridad.blogspot.com\/search\/label\/Cuba<\/p>\n

10) \u201cTransg\u00c3\u00a9nicos: \u00bfQu\u00c3\u00a9 se gana? \u00bfQu\u00c3\u00a9 se pierde? Textos para un debate en Cuba\u201d Texts compiled by Fernando Funes Monzote and Eduardo Francisco Freyre Roach<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.foodfirst.org\/en\/node\/2451<\/p>\n

This article originally appeared on: Counterpunch<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cDuring the Special Period\u2019s most difficult years, countless and creative solutions were found by our campesinos and agricultural science researchers. There was one objective and one priority: to recover our agricultural systems and produce what\u2019s necessary to feed ourselves. However, we needed integrating and modeling concepts for the changes that were now indispensable, and we […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-39981","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-breaking-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39981","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39981"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39981\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39981"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39981"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39981"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}