Catherine Murphy talking:
Part of what happened in Cuba was that in the mid-’80s Cuba had a highly mechanized and industrialized agriculture system. They had more tractors per capita than any country in Latin America, and they were investing a lot of money into national food production. But nonetheless, they were still importing 57 percent of the calories eaten on the island from the Soviet Union and Soviet bloc countries. So, when the Soviet Union fell apart, Cuba lost those imports immediately, within a two-, three-year period, along with a 34, 35 percent contraction of their GDP. It launched Cuba into a major economic crisis, and that was a food and agriculture crisis, as well, in a central way, because of the loss of the direct food imports and also the loss of the many other imports into the agriculture sector upon which national food production had become dependent—again, pesticides, fertilizers, petroleum, tractor spare parts, spare parts for other kind of agriculture machinery. So, they were faced with the daunting task of needing to greatly increase food production with a fraction of the resources available.
Immediately, city residents—in particular, Havana has two million of the 11 million people on the island, live in Havana, largest city in the Caribbean—Havana residents started going out and growing food on empty lots that were close to their homes, using any seeds they could find, with any tools that were available, and literally on any space that was near their homes, including some in their homes—patios, balconies, rooftops. And, you know, urban farming was increasing all around the world at that time in the ’90s with global urbanization, but what was different about Havana was that the city government and other structures started to look at how could they strategically support this booming victory garden movement, as opposed to other cities around the world where urban food production became illegal and sometimes people were run off. The Havana city government started to look at, well, how can we support food producers in the city, not only support them, but really recognize that food production is a major national priority.
So, they started finding ways to give urban food producers use rights to land through usufruct, give them sales permits to do direct sales from onsite, help them find ways to get water, and help them with training and—training and resources. But really, the kind of agriculture that’s necessary in small spaces, this highly diversified, intensive planting, was not the kind of agriculture that had happened in Cuba traditionally, so there was a whole new body of knowledge that needed to come to these already farming urban farmers. And so, a permaculture movement was born. The Council of Churches got involved—many community organizations, the Women’s Federation—in helping to strategically support the urban farmers.
And within several years, they really helped to turn around the most critical part of the food crisis, which was dramatic. I think it’s hard to imagine. The caloric intake fell by about half. The average Cuban lost 10 to 20 pounds of body weight. There were a number of health epidemics, including a neuropathy—an eye neuropathy epidemic that resulted in nervous system damage and some eye and vision damage. So, this rapid decrease in caloric intake was a serious—was really seen as the most serious problem on the island at the time and became a priority issue to solve. So, with this public-private partnership, they were able to turn it around, and within just a few years, there were tens of thousands of urban gardens around the city, and peri-urban gardens, and they were growing 30 to 50 percent of the fresh vegetables eaten on the island, introducing vegetables that had never been eaten in Cuba before, like broccoli, cauliflower, some things like eggplant that weren’t so common, and really improved the quality of the diet—I mean, a lot of those especially green, leafy vegetables, providing key micronutrients in the lack of other proteins.
And it changed the cityscape. It changed—it vastly improved the food security situation, but it also changed the cityscape. It provided tens of thousands of jobs, significantly for retired people and for women and for youth, and provided—
The figures around how much food is imported to Cuba today is hotly contested. It’s still the majority. Some figures show 50 percent, up to 80 percent, of the food is still imported. Wheat, for example, you can’t grow in the tropics; they have to import it. They import a lot of frozen chicken from the United States through Tyson Foods and others. They import rice. But they are still increasing food production on the island of roots, tubers, rice, beans, fruits and vegetables. And the third agrarian reform that’s happening now, giving land—150,000 people have asked for parcels of land in this new land redistribution.
— source democracynow.org
Catherine Murphy, filmmaker who lived and studied in Cuba in the 1990s. Her film titled Maestra explores the stories of the youngest women teachers in the 1961 national literacy campaign in Cuba.