In spite of this economic crisis, there have been some remarkable and promising innovations in Cuba. The state farm sector has been privatized in the form of workers' cooperatives. In response to a huge drop in pesticide and fertilizer imports, Cuban agriculture is being transformed. Cuba is presently in the third year of the largest national conversion from conventional agriculture to largescale alternative farming in history.
For decades, Cuba depended on its socialist trading partners for petroleum, industrial equipment and supplies, and foodstuffs. When trade relations with the socialist bloc collapsed in 1990, pesticide and fertilizer imports dropped by roughly 80 percent and food imports fell by more than a half. Now the enormous challenges facing Cuba are to double food production, halve inputs and maintain food export production to avoid worsening its foreign exchange balance.
Fortunately, Cuba has certain advantages. With only two percent of Latin America's population, it has 11 percent of its scientists and a well-developed research infrastructure, including research experience in alternative agriculture.
The alternative agriculture movement took hold among Cuban researchers as early as 1982 and many promising research results -which had previously remained relatively unused -- were available for immediate and widespread implementation in the transition from conventional agriculture.
Planning authorities in the Ministry of Agriculture have officially declared that all new agricultural development be based on the "alternative model." This concept contrasts with the "classical model" of conventional agriculture, which is characterized by highly mechanized farming methods and monocultures of foreign crop species that are primarily cultivated for export and require imported agricultural inputs.
The alternative model promotes ecologically sustainable production by replacing the dependence on mechanical farming equipment and chemical inputs with animal traction, crop and pasture rotation, soil conservation, organic soil inputs, biological pest control, and "biofertilizers" and "biopesticides" (microbial pesticides and fertilizers that are non-toxic to humans). This method requires the reincorporation of rural populations into agriculture by using their labor, as well as their knowledge of traditional farming techniques, and their active participation in generating new, more appropriate technologies.
This model is designed to stem the flood of rural migrants into urban areas and to provide food security for the nation. It is virtually identical to alternatives proposed in the US, Latin America, Europe and elsewhere, differing principally in one key respect: while it represents a utopian vision for many, it is now government policy and agricultural practice in Cuba.
The Cuban Association for Organic Farming, (a local nongovernmental organization composed of ecological-agricultural activists), is working with the Advanced Institute for Agricultural Sciences of Havana, the Institute for Food and Development Policy and the University of California to document the transformation of Cuban agriculture and evaluate the efficacy of the new technologies by looking at economic productivity and environmental and social indicators.
Large-scale conversion to organic farming can take between three and five years to achieve previous levels of productivity. Cuban scientists and planners hope to accelerate 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 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.
This article was abstracted from the forthcoming book: The Greening of Cuba: A National Experiment in Organic Agriculture, 1994, by Peter Rosset and Medea Benjamin. To order: (800) 274- 7826. $11.95, shipping $4.00. For further information, contact Institute for Food and Development Policy, ("Food First"), 398 60th Street, Oakland, CA 94618, (510) 654-4400; fax (510) 654-4551.
