Fidel Castro's speech Earth Summit RIO DE JANEIRO, BRASIL, 12 JUNE 1992 english español
Article 27 of the 1993 Constitution of Rep. of Cuba--on the environmentFAQ
NGO/NPO Promotes public interest in learning about the marine environment and issues that effect it. Raises awareness about the search for viable ways to protect the ocean http://www.acualina.org/
A natural and ecological line of cosmetics containing highly mineralized Cuban mud and water as active ingredients is entering the international market in diverse forms: dermatological soap, nutritive masks, thermal clay, anti-cellulite mud, facial toners and sunscreens.
"
Katrina, Meet Dennis" is a comparison of the ways Cuba and the US prepare for and respond to natural disasters such as hurricanes. For an in-depth look at the two countries' hurricane management policies and practice, click on this link.
The Greening
of Cuba
If a small socialist country can make these achievements,just think of the potential if the whole world would become a socialist world with science in harmony with nature.
The Cuban developments should be a guide for environmentalists through out the world.
Across the Florida Straits from Miami in the capital city of a country ranked 90th in GDP by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), students in Havana, Cuba, are munching on a wide variety of fresh fruits and vegetables, picked by their own hands in the school garden, or grown nearby in urban organic gardens.
In the early 1990s, the average Cuban dinner table did not boast a spread even remotely close to the bounty enjoyed by many today. During these years, when foreign economic support disappeared with the collapse of the Soviet Union, average caloric and protein intake dropped to nearly 30 percent below 1980s levels.
Faced with the possibility of widespread starvation, the Cuban government foresaw that a full-scale mobilization of domestic resources, both human and natural, would be required in order to increase production to meet the demands of a hungry populace. And with few options to import food given the stringency of the U.S. embargo, Cuba turned over a new leaf by converting almost entirely to an organic production system within 10 years.
Cuba's nationwide commitment to food self-sufficiency without reliance on chemical or mechanical technologies has borne some startlingly successful results, not only in terms of food production but also in the development of a more personalized food culture, woven deeply into patterns of food consumption, nutrition, and community.
These trends, which many sustainable agriculture experts enthusiastically champion, also appear to be on the brink of a major confrontation with the powerful forces of the global market, from which Cuba was virtually exempt until 2001, when U.S. policy toward agricultural exports to Cuba began to shift slightly. The strength of Cuba's food security, with all its growing bureaucratic and market support, will inevitably be put to the test as small but increasing concessions are made to expand trade between Cuba and its closest potential trading partner, the United States.
Collapse and Revival
In 1989, as a result of the collapse of the Soviet Union and the subsequent retraction of petroleum, farm equipment, food subsidies, and the preferential trade relationship that had come with Soviet support of the Cuban state, the country lapsed into a phase of dire food, energy, and morale shortages, known as the "Special Period" or periodo especial.
Cuba had been under the thumb of various colonial empires from Spain and the United States since the 16th century. The Soviet Union, during its phase of supporting Cuba, continued with a system that encouraged the production of sugar and tobacco for foreign markets, leaving little land for food production.
In 1989, however, no one came to scoop up the Caribbean island and ladle in more subsidies, and the Cubans felt a new sense of excision from the global market.
Cubans from all walks of life suffered during this period; shortages were reminiscent of war time, though the country was diplomatically at peace. The crisis was worsened by the tightening of the U.S. trade embargo through two pieces of legislation in 1992 and 1996, zapping any possibility of Cuba looking outside its boundaries for assistance - except to a few friendly governments like Venezuela and Nicaragua.
The agricultural model inherited from the 1980s was not a particularly advantageous one. Farming in Cuba before the Special Period was characterized by large quantities of chemical inputs in a highly monocultural and intensive system. In this period, Cuban farms had been using roughly 200 kilograms of nitrates per hectare. Without the Soviets delivering these expensive inputs at subsidized rates, Cuban farmers and average hungry citizens had no choice but to look to alternative models in developing a new agricultural system.
After 10 years of hard work and major food shortages, most Cubans can feel secure in having access to fresh, nutritious food through the extensive network of intensively cultivated urban gardens, or organoponicos, and state-run farms and cooperatives outside the cities. They can also take comfort in the fact that nearly all the food they eat comes from a self-sufficient agricultural system that relies only minimally on pesticides, fertilizers, or expensive machinery.
Given the highly restrictive nature of the U.S. embargo on trade with and from Cuba, the Cubans have been forced to virtually sink or swim in terms of procuring or growing food. Because of the terms of the trade sanctions, Cuba has been ineligible to receive food aid from international aid agencies.
Peter Rosset, co-director of Food First/Institute for Food and Development Policy based in Oakland, Calif., has been researching food issues in Cuba since the early 1990s. He said, "Cuba has resisted three things: the blockade of the U.S. embargo, the fallout of the Soviet Union, and the industrial green revolution and economic globalization that has taken its toll elsewhere in the world."
Fortunately, with a combination of solid scientific expertise and institutional will, Cuba was able to replace conventional farming practices with more practical and affordable alternatives. By charting new courses in research, land management, and market supply, government officials and scientists were able to avert a full hunger crisis and activate farmers and urban citizens to dedicate themselves to meeting food demands.
Key ingredients in the new agricultural model are the urban agriculture movement; traditional farming techniques like composting and intercropping (growing two crops together that benefit each other by warding off particular pests); new nontoxic biopesticides and biofertilizers; worker-managed collectives; quotas for farmers to insure adequate supply for the whole country; and opening farmers' markets where excess food crops can be sold by farmers for profit.
The government also addressed land availability for domestic food production by redistributing parcels of land that had formerly operated as cane plantations for the sugar industry, which exchanged its products for oil from the Soviet Union. Each of these initiatives has created a fertile environment for technological innovation in organic production and economic incentives that encourage more people to farm.
According to Rosset, "Cuba has been able to change farming techniques in order to survive, but it has been an ongoing process of institutionalizing the farming alternatives."
Throughout the past decade, government agencies like the Ministries of Agriculture, Health, Education, and Communication have been developing increasingly coordinated efforts to integrate agricultural extension education, nutrition education, and outreach to the Cuban people. The government has committed to make fresh fruits and vegetables available to every citizen, but so far, they haven't quite managed to do this. Cuban authorities say that at this point, availability is not so much of an issue. Instead, they are now working on ways to bring down the prices so that even the poorest consumers can enjoy the bounty.
Urban Agriculture on the Rise
Cuba's commitment to sustainable farming practices demonstrates how huge improvements in food production can be achieved even under stressful economic and environmental conditions. Urban agriculture has played an integral role in achieving food security, and Cuba is at the vanguard of the global urban agriculture movement. In 2002, Cuba produced 3.2 million tons of food in urban farms and gardens.
In 2002, more than 35,000 hectares (86,450 acres) of urban land were dedicated to the intensive production of fresh fruits, vegetables, and spices. According to Dr. Nelso Campanioni Concepción, deputy director of the National Institute for Fundamental Research on Tropical Agriculture (INIFAT), "The goal of urban agriculture is to gain the most food from every square meter of available space. The secret to the success of urban agriculture in Cuba has been the introduction of new technologies and varieties and an increase in areas farmed."
Another factor favoring urban agriculture is that Cuba does not have the transport infrastructure - especially since the Soviets stopped delivering fuel - to deliver large quantities of food from rural areas to the cities on a regular basis. This means that urban residents benefit not only from feeding themselves but also by guaranteeing the freshness of their daily sustenance.
Extra food is shared in the community. Retirement home and hospital kitchens receive anywhere from a steady supply to seasonal, fluctuating donations from neighborhood gardens. These gardens, coupled with the comprehensive rural and suburban farms, play a critical role in completing the sense of food security that Cubans now enjoy.
Nutritious and Delicious
Filberto Samora, the administrator of one of the oldest organoponicos in Havana which won recognition from President Fidel Castro, said, "This organoponico is very much a part of the neighborhood. We give food to the school two blocks away, and all the neighbors come to buy food from the stand."
Samora's organoponico grows bok choi, lettuces, and cilantro, but farmers from outlying areas of Havana are also allowed to sell their produce at Samora's stand. The organoponico facility has also begun to produce its own seeds and compost for distribution to other farms in Havana.
The farmstands and neighborhood gardens have not only provided a consistent source of fresh and affordable food, but the fact that fresh produce is now readily available has also played a critical role in guiding the Cuban diet in a more healthy direction.
"After the Special Period, once food was plentiful again, people were stuffing their faces with foods like meats and sugars that they had been deprived of," said Madelaine Vásques Gálvez, owner of El Bambú, a vegetarian restaurant outside Havana, and editor of Germinal, a journal that focuses on food education for sustainability. "We now know that there are many diseases associated with diets high in sugar and fat."
Vásques has been involved with ecological cuisine in Cuba for 11 years. Her cooking style utilizes a wide range of native fruits and vegetables grown in the restaurant's own permaculture garden. Permaculture is an approach that emphasizes holistic design and maintenance so that the food system mirrors a biologically productive ecosystem. In other parts of the restaurant as well, Vásques sticks to ecological principles. For example, her stoves are powered by solar panels.
The Cuban diet has not always included copious amounts of vegetables, especially not those of the leafy green persuasion. As strange as it seems to some Cubans, especially the older generations whose diets have primarily depended on Soviet subsidies, vegetables appear to be catching on. There are now nine vegetarian restaurants in Havana, and urban gardeners from all walks of life expound upon the importance of fresh food.
The government and market have worked together to both feed the people and nurture the soil, and so diversity in diet has evolved, mirroring the crop diversity in the field. In the past few years, the Ministry of Health has become strongly supportive of and involved with urban gardening and the diversification of the Cuban diet.
Samora said, "It is still too early to determine where the new program of educating children on the healthy aspects of vegetables is really having an impact on their concept of what tastes good. We do find, though, that they want vegetables just as much as their parents when they come to the stand."
Secure in Food, but Secure in Future?
The news of Cuba's success has been slowly leaking out since the early 1990s, and the country is beginning to take on legendary status as a model for sustainable agriculture and local food production in the eyes of environmental advocates, farmers, and development specialists. Already lauded for years by the steady stream of sustainable farming gurus from around the world who have made the pilgrimage to observe the success of organic and local food production, Cuba's experiment with sustainable agriculture has succeeded beyond its trial period.
American farmers have been shuttled to Cuba in "fact-finding missions" and "reality tours" by crafty NGOs who have obtained the highly coveted U.S. Department of Treasury Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) licenses allowing them to sponsor travel to Cuba for educational purposes. Whether many of these trips will be allowed to continue is unclear; in March 2003, OFAC announced the end of people-to-people exchanges. Most groups who have had the appropriate licenses are scheduled to lose them by December 2003.
But a rapidly approaching future of shifting economic opportunities poses serious questions and potential risks to this Cuba's model, regarded as precious by so many of its advocates.
Despite the embargo, in 2000, President Clinton signed the Trade Sanctions Reform and Export Enhancement Act (TSRA), which re-authorized the direct commercial export of food products and agricultural products via cash transactions from the United States to Cuba - but not from Cuba to the United States.
In September 2002, after the U.S. Food and Agribusiness Exhibition took place in Havana, the Cuban government purchased more than $91.9 million in food and agricultural products from subsidiaries of U.S. companies based in Latin America and Canada and directly from U.S. companies.
Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), one of the world's largest exporters of cereal grains and oilseeds, signed a $19 million contract for soybean oil, soybeans, soy proteins, corn, margarine, and rice. In 2001, ADM's lobbying - combined with wreckage in Cuba after Hurricane Michelle - was the tipping point that persuaded the Bush Administration to allow the first sale of goods directly from the United States to Cuba since 1962.
The American Corn Growers Association (ACGA), which, to date, has not taken up trade negotiations with Cuba, would be interested in trade sometime in the future, said its chief executive officer.
"We should be exporting to any nation that needs food," said CEO Larry Mitchell.
With Cuba's well-documented ability to feed itself, why would the Cuban government be interested in spending $91.9 million on food imports?
John S. Kavulich II, president of the U.S. Trade and Economic Council based in New York City, said, "There is a strong political component to the Cubans' decision to purchase food products from us. Of the products purchased since 2001, nearly all of them are available from other sources at better prices."
Kavulich cited rice as an example. The Cubans could buy rice from Vietnam at a significantly lower price, but they choose to purchase from purveyors like ADM instead.
Food First's Rosset agrees. "I believe the Cubans are buying from the U.S. as a political gesture. They hope the food corporations will lobby the U.S. government on their behalf to lift the embargo."
Aside from the disruption in self-sufficiency, there is also growing concern that if the embargo is eventually lifted, global agricultural giants will persuade farmers to drop their organic methods in favor of high pesticide and fertilizer usage.
However, Dr. Nelso Campanioni Concepción of INIFAT responded: "We are not going back. We will increase production, but we will not degrade the environment doing it."
Speculating on the possible institutional reactions to a global market that peddles genetically engineered seeds, pesticides, and fertilizers, Rosset said, "There is a possibility of a negative impact on the Cuban model. There may be a short term increase in pesticide use and a stronger interest in biotechnology, but they may not last because they may not fulfill Cuban agricultural needs."
The members of the U.S. Trade and Economic Council Inc. seem to be chomping at the Cuban market bit. Kavulich said, "We have many members who have begun discussions with the Cubans over a wide array of products like food and hospitality services and biotech products."
As of now, the only McDonald's in Cuba is located on the Guantánamo Bay naval base, which has belonged to the United States since 1934. Cuban fast food chains exist and are popular, but they do not dominate the landscape or pepper the national concept of food, largely because advertising does not exist. If McDonald's and U.S.-produced corn, peas, and carrots in a can are eventually allowed into Cuba, it will still be up to the Cubans whether they prefer the foreign food to their own backyard-grown papayas, yucca, and lettuce.
Eliza Barclay is a freelance writer based in Washington, D.C.
Monsanto: "Playing God in the Garden"
In the October 25, 1998, New York Times Magazine, there is an article titled " Potato-Playing God in the Garden" By Michael Pollan. This article explains that Monsanto has genetically engineered a potato (Labeled "New Leaf") that is immune to insects that attack potatoes. Monsanto has genetically engineered a naturally occurring pesticide into this new breed of potatoes. Thus this potato is considered a pesticide by the FDA, under present law, and this means that consumers do not have to be told that they are eating a pesticide. Monsanto see genetic engineering as a way to get off "the pesticideý treadmill" and to have environmentally safe agriculture. But this course has many pitfalls. In past articles I have explained that prior to the large scale introduction of pesticides one third of all crops were lost to insects, weeds and bacteria.
Today, the loses are exactly the same because insects, bacteria, and weeds multiply quickly and develop immunity to the pesticides. This has led to more and more pesticides being used and continuously higher costs for agriculture. The great tragedy is that humans (unlike insects) do not reproduce fast enough to develop immunity to the chemicals used in farming. We now know that many pesticides cause cancer after long term exposures. Unfortunately, there has been no extensive testing about the long-range effects of consumption of this pesticide.
One of the Monsanto executives interviewed by Michael Pollan in response to questions about this issue said: "Trust Us.?!" Monsanto, it must be remembered, was one of the manufacturers of "Agent Orange" which Monsanto considered safe to spray on civilians and soldiers during the Vietnam War.
Monsanto also produces other similar products: Roundup and rBGH. rBGH is used to increase milk production in cows. Monsanto wants us to "trust them" that t‰his compound, too. is safe. rBGH,when injected into cows, produces milk that contains rBGH. And when rBGH is consumed it becomes IGF-1 in the body. Recent scientific studies have shown that IGF-1 increases the risk of breast cancer and prostrate cancer. Dr. Samuel S. Epstein at the University of Illinois in Chicago has criticized the FDA for doing nothing. In a paper published in the 1996 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF HEALTH SERVICES (Vol. 26, No. 1), he wrote, "with the active complicity of the FDA, the entire nation is currently being subjected to an experiment involving large-scale adulteration of an age-old dietary staple by a poorly characterized and unlabeled biotechnology product [rBGH]. ... "Disturbingly, this experiment benefits only a very small segment of the agrichemical industry while providing no matching benefits to consumers. Even more disturbingly, it poses major potential public health risks for the entire U.S. population."
The question is: will men and women who, in their youth, drank this milk get prostate cancer or breast cancer at an earlier age? Is it worth the risk? Of course not!
Yet, Monsanto and other chemical companies are putting products on the market that are not independently tested for risks to human beings. It will only be after the "body count" that the government regulatory agencies will declare a disaster.
Monsanto, in its quest to capture the milk market, has even gone to court against dairies that label their milk as free from rBGH. According to Peter Montague, editor of Rachel's Environmental Health Weekly, the:
"FDA has sided with Monsanto in opposing labeling of milk produced by drug-treated cows, and has gone one step further. FDA opposes labeling of products that are free of rBGH. FDA has even threatened legal action against milk suppliers and grocers who label their milk as free from the rBGH drug. FDA continues there is "no significant¥t difference " between milk from rBGH-treated cows and milk from cows not treated, and thus, a label saying "rBGH-free " would imply a difference that did not exist, and this would constitute false labeling.
"Monsanto has filed two lawsuits against milk processors who labeled their product as free of rBGH and has mailed warnings to others who might be tempted to label their milk as rBGH-free. [4] The FDA's position on labeling was developed under the direction of Michael R. Taylor, a lawyer who joined FDA in 1991 after almost a decade as a partner in the law firm that Monsanto hired to gain FDA approval of rBGH and that last month brought Monsanto's lawsuits against milk producers who labeled their products rBGH-free." Montague also pointed out: "In the fall of 1996, award-winning reporters Steve Wilson and Jane Are were hired by WTVT in Tampa to produce a series on rBGH in Florida milk. After more than a year's work on the rBGH´ series, and three days before the series was scheduled to air starting February 24, 1997, Fox TV executives received the first of two letters from lawyers representing Monsanto saying that Monsanto would suffer "enormous damage" if the series ran. WTVT had been advertising the series aggressively, but canceled it at the last moment. Monsanto's second letter warned of "dire consequences" for Fox if the series aired as it stood." When these two emmy award winners, refused to change their reports-they were forced to leave the TV station and have since filed a law suit. The story was aired, but all mention about harmful effects such as cancer were deleted from the story.
In the past year, Monsanto wrote a threatening letter to Vital Health Publishing in Bloomingdale, Illinois over the proposed publication of AGAINST THE GRAIN, a book by Marc Lappé and Britt Bailey. Monsanto said the new book would libel its best-selling pro´duct, the herbicide Roundup(glyphosate). Like rBGH, Roundup, becomes part of the products that humans consume. We do know that this pesticide causes eye injuries in farm workers, that some tests by Monsanto raise the possibility that it can cause cancer. Once again, Monsanto is the only company that has tested this product. Monsanto and the government regulatory agencies are playing Russian Roulette with our future. Recently, The Ecologist, a world renown environmental magazine for the past 25 years, wrote an in depth study of Monsanto and its genetic engineering. But the magazine's printing company, fearing a lawsuit, turned all of the copies that it had printed into pulp before they could be distributed.
The human tragedy is that Monsanto and other large capitalist enterprises are unregulated by government. They will do anything for profit, including large scale murder of people that consume their products. .
"Butterflys Are Free"
Many poems have been written about being as "free as a butterfly," fluttering from one flower to another with reckless abandon. Yet recent studies by scientists demonstrate that human development of genetically engineered plants has restricted the freedom of monarch butterflies. It was recently reported in the journal Nature that the pollen from genetically engineered corn containing a toxin gene called Bt killed 44 percent of the monarch butterfly caterpillars who fed on milkweed leaves dusted with it. Caterpillars fed with conventional pollen all survived. Since nearly 25 percent of the U.S. corn crop now contains this gene and the Corn Belt states of the Midwest are where half of the monarch butterflies are produced each year, there is a distinct possibility that the number of monarchs will drastically decline. Due to the unexpected results of the monarch butterfly study, scientists are now beginning to question the potential environmental effects of scores of other genetically engineered crops being introduced into the agricultural fields. The question that is raised is: Why weren't such studies done before introducing genetically engineered corn, soy, cotton, and other crops over millions of acres of farm land? Are these dying caterpillars like dying canaries in a mine warning us of danger?
Will Benefits Outweigh the Costs?
Since these studies have not been done, the British Medical Association (BMA) has recently issued a statement regarding genetically modified food. They begin their statement ("Agriculture, Food and Health") with a quote that gives an overview on evolution and genetic engineering:
The BMA then goes on to propose several steps to insure safety:
The BMA also recommends that a moratorium be placed on the commercial planting of GM crops in the UK until there is general scientific agreement about the potential long-term environmental effects. GM foodstuffs, they say, should be segregated at source and adequately labeled to enable identification and traceability of GM products. All of the above procedures do not seem to be that complicated. Unfortunately, in the United States, although the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act incorporates the precautionary principle, the FDA does not apply this principle to genetically engineered foods. (It ruled in 1992 that genetically engineered foods are not new food additives.) This is not hard to understand since Monsanto and Dupont are the main corporate producers of these foods. Unfettered by the precautionary principle, these gigantic chemical corporations are now conquering farming through genetic engineering. Their products have led to larger yields of food products in the short term.
Just as in the past, their chemicals have led to short-term increase in farm productivity. With this increase in productivity, these corporate giants are now attempting to establish a monopoly over all agricultural production throughout the world.
In the course of this endeavor they have patented their products and the seeds, so that farmers have to buy seeds from them every year. They have sued farmers who have kept seeds for future harvest and they are producing a "terminator gene" so that their products will not produce fertile seeds.
In this manner, all production of food will eventually be under their control.
From past experience with these companies, profits have always come before consumer and environmental safety. They are not concerned about any long-term effects that their products may have on humanity or the rest of the world.
In fact, the insurance companies, being aware of these facts, have refused insurance coverage for any long-term effects of genetically engineered products.
Cuban Science Versus Monsanto
In Issue #1, March 1999, of the Monsanto Monitor, there is an interview with a Cuban geneticist. In this interview, Rebecka Milestad, of the Research School in Ecological Land Use at the Department of Rural Development Studies, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, wrote: "'If Monsanto came to Cuba, we would never sell ourselves to them. Cuba is more important than money,' claimed Eduardo, a geneticist at the agricultural university in Havana Province, where I visited him and his colleagues in January this year.
"Their laboratory facilities are run down and they complain that other research institutes in Cuba receive more resources for genetic engineering research.
Yet he still would not work for a company like Monsanto.
"So I asked how Monsanto practice differs from that what he and his fellow researchers do. He replied, 'they wouldn't dream of trying to develop herbicide-resistant crops, for example, that are only designed for the big companies to make money.
"'In Cuba,' he continued, 'we only use biotechnology and genetic engineering for the good of our people and our country. And there is no limit to what we can achieve with this technology.'"
Cuba has been in the forefront of developing organic farming along with their biotechnology. Due to the blockade, they have been forced to move away from chemical agriculture.
In fact, the Cuban experiment in agriculture should be carefully observed. In my opinion, the results that they have already achieved demonstrate that their approach shows the way to combine science and technology for the benefit of the environment and humanity.
"Butterflies are free, and so are we..." are the words to a song by Leonard Gershe in his play "Butterflies are Free." We and the butterflies can only be free if we are safe in our own habitat.
Cuba: "The Road Not Taken"
Lately, I have been reading "Toxic Deception: How the Chemical Industry Manipulates Science,Bends the Law, and Endangers Your Health". This book, written by Dan Fagin and Marianne Lavelle and "the Center for Public Integrity", is a clear "snapshot" of how Industry set up its own scientific institutions to counter the gains of the environmental and health and safety movements of the 1970's. ( Spending hundreds of millions of dollars to defend their chemicals.)
The authors describe the book as "...the story of how the chemical industry has managed to keep so many of its toxic products on the market, even in the face of mounting evidence of their danger and emerging-and safer- alternatives.
It is also the story of how the federal agencies that are supposed to be the public's watchdogs have been deranged by the chemical industry's pressure tactics, which include junkets and job offers to government regulators, major contributions to politicians, scorched-earth courtroom strategies, and misleading multimillion-dollar advertising and public relations campaign."
Two of the four toxic chemicals that they use to prove their point are Astrazine and Alachor. Both chemicals are used as pesticides extensively in agriculture. Both chemicals have been banned in other countries because of their association to breast cancer and other female cancers. They have not been banned in the United States due to the economic power political clout of agribusiness and the chemical industry.
Pesticides,fertilizers,and other chemicals and mechanization are the basic ingredients of agribusiness in the United States. The initial thrust into large scale farming resulted in a large increase in productivity of food. But industry has gotten on the chemical treadmill where larger and larger capital investments of more and more fertilizers and pesticides are needed to maintain production while water supplies are becoming more and more polluted by these chemicals. The chemicals not only get into the water supply-they also become part of our food supply. One by-product of food production is cancer.
Prior to the introduction of large-scale chemical farming, one third of all crops were lost to weeds, bacteria, and insects. Today, after the constant increase in chemical use, one third of all crops are still lost to weeds, bacteria, and insects as they become resistant to the chemicals. Thus, the "chemical treadmill" has kept us in the same place at greater costs in capital investment and human lives. (We do not reproduce fast enough to become resistant to the chemicals.) This model has become one of ever-increasing costs and declining levels of production.
To reverse this process would be to stop large scale farming conducted by agribusiness which requires a one crop, fully mechanized, fully fertilized, and fully pesticided approach to agriculture. Huge capital investments in farming and industry would be lost. That is why the toxic chemicals described by Fagin and Lavelle are considered by the government to be a "protected species".
In the long run, this type of farming is the least efficient even though it is the most profitable.
Recently, agriculture ecologists, who are aware of the "treadmill", have been advocating a different model for farm production. This model is based on smaller farms rotating crops and breeding livestock. This is a natural (organic) method of controlling weeds, insects, and bacteria that feed on farm produce. Until recently, there have been no large scale models to demonstrate the alternative form of agriculture.
Unfortunately, the "Socialist Block" model also embarked on the "chemical road" for agricultural production along with "forced collectivizations".
The Soviet Union was an underdeveloped country with little technological skills which basically copied the science and the agricultural models found in the Industrialized countries. In the Soviet Union there was no science or mechanism to do otherwise and still feed the population in the context of a civil war and a blockade. In the case of Cuba, the chemical models of both the United States and the Soviet Union was continued.
The 38 year economic blockade of Cuba hampered the development of the Cuban economy. To the credit of the Cuban Revolution they did not carry out any forced collectivizations. They did copy the Soviet model of large chemically dependent state farms. When the "Socialist Block" stopped all trade with Cuba, the Cuban economy was severely crippled. They could no longer import the amount of oil,fertilizers, and pesticides to continue large scale mechanized food production. They had to move in the direction of the alternative model of agriculture that I previously described.
In response to a huge drop in pesticide and fertilizer imports, Cuban agriculture is being transformed. Cuba is presently undertaking the largest national conversion from conventional agriculture to large scale alternative farming in history.
I attended the "Dialogue With Cuba" conference at the University of Berkeley on March 23,1998. I went to the panel discussion on agriculture in Cuba and saw the film; "The Greening of Cuba". In that film one can see the dramatic transformation that is taking place in agriculture. Normally it takes 3-5 years, after the transition, to begin to achieve the previous levels of productivity. Cuba had the task of feeding its population while undergoing this transformation.
"The Greening of Cuba" is a documentary on how well the Cubans have met the challenge. One of the gains of the Cuban Revolution has been the development of education. Although Cuba has only 2% of the population of Latin America, it has 11% of the PHd's in Latin America. Cuban scientists were mobilized-not to protect chemicals as in this country-but to develop the alternative organic model . In the past few years Cuban scientists and planners have accelerated this process by using sophisticated biotechnology techniques, such as the mass production of naturally occurring local organisms to create biopesticides and biofertilizers. Among the alternative tactics being used for pest control, the most important are conventional biological controls based on mass releases of parasitic and predatory insects and the use of biopesticides.
Cuba produces numerous formulations of bacterial and fungal diseases that attack insect pests. These are applied to crops in lieu of chemical insecticides.
At present, 218 biotechnology centers are located on agricultural cooperatives, where the workers are typically people in their twenties who were born on the cooperative and have received some university-level training. Industrial production of these biopesticides is under way for larger- scale operations aimed at export crops. Many biopesticides are applied to crops in place of chemical insecticides. Cuba is also one of the world leaders in the use of biofertilizers, including the standard Rhizobium inoculants for leguminous crops, as well as free-living bacteria that make atmospheric nitrogen available for non-legumes, and solubilizing bacteria that liberate phosphorus for uptake by plants.
It is unclear whether the widespread implementation of an alternative model of agricultural development will, in conjunction with other government policies, allow Cuba to emerge from the crisis wrought by the collapse of the socialist bloc. The continued and growing success of the experiment in alternative agricultural currently underway in Cuba is unprecedented, with potentially enormous implications for other countries suffering from the declining sustainability of conventional agricultural production. Hopefully, Cuba will soon be self-sufficent in food production
The movie captures the still living dynamics of the Cuban Revolution and the fighting spirit of the population as they started from scratch to rebuild their farms and introduce urban agriculture.
The Cuban could have followed the road of the Soviet Union and China towards capitalist restoration. Instead, they chose the road of extending and deepening their socialist revolution. In the process they had to give control over the development of farming to the scientists and the those working the farms.
The success of organic farming is the product of the combined efforts of a people determined to protect their independence from the United States.
The film is a testimony to the capacity of humanity to work socially to solve its problems of survival and to act for the social good of all. "What a piece of work is humanity!" Viva Cuba!
The Other Cuban Revolution
An October, 1999 news release from from Food First, announced that the Right Livelihood Award Alternative Nobel Prize Goes to Cuban Group Promoting the Organic Revolution. This group was the Grupo de Agricultura Organica (GAO), the Cuban organic farming association, which has been setting the standard for sustainable agriculture for the world.
In accepting this award, Dr. Fernado Funes-Aguilar, President of GAO said:
"This award is truly an honor for Cuba, for GAO, and for all the farmers, researchers, and policy makers who have struggled to make organic farming work in Cuba. We hope that our efforts will demonstrate to other countries that conventional chemically-dependent agriculture is not the only way to feed a country."
In the press release, Peter Rosset, executive director of Food First, said:
"This award shows the enormous potential of sustainable agriculture, which is so under exploited in other countries. The whole world should learn from Cuba."
Dr. Rosset went on to say that "in Cuba, organic is for everyone, not just for those who can afford it.
In past articles I have written on the importance of the Cuban developments in agriculture. That the chemical dependent agriculture for profit in Capitalist society is making cancer part of our food chain based on an ever increasing use of pesticides.
This award supports that conclusion.
I have also written that how the Cuban Socialist Revolution has been a revolution to establish harmony between science and nature to establish a sustainable economy and environment.
Researchers around the world are now beginning to recognize these achievements of the Cuban Revolution.
If a small socialist country can make these achievements, just think of the potential if the whole world would become a socialist world with science in harmony with nature.
The Cuban developments should be a guide for environmentalists through out the world.
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Environment