Cuba is embarking on an ambitious project to tackle the food crisis. Cuba’s Deputy Agriculture Minister Juan Pérez Lamas told journalists in early June that the country’s rice imports could be halved within five years. In order to maintain current rice consumption levels, it will be necessary to double rice production.
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According to Lamas, the effort will involve state-owned enterprises, cooperatives and individual farmers, family plots and farms run by the Revolutionary Armed Forces and the Ministry of the Interior. (Cuban News Agency, June 4)
The announcement follows a fierce food security campaign undertaken by the Cuban government. Earlier this year, President Raúl Castro had announced new agrarian reforms aimed at stimulating food production in Cuba’s rural and urban settings.
The moves include the planting of idle lands around the cities, while also making arable land more available in the countryside. The state is providing farmers with seeds and fertilizer, as well as more farming equipment and machinery. The measures are intended to assure Cuba’s food sovereignty and long-term food security.
The government is not alone in tackling the crisis. Small farmers in the province of Las Tunas recently adopted an agreement in the course of more than 180 grassroots assemblies to increase the production of rice and beans. Additionally, the farmers will produce more milk, which will be sold directly to children, the elderly and the sick.
The international food crisis has taken the world by storm. Food riots and demonstrations have taken place in dozens of countries throughout the world, as far-flung as Egypt, Italy, Indonesia, and Haiti. Cuba has likewise been deeply affected. Vice President Carlos Lage predicted that imported food would cost the government at least 50 percent more this year than in 2007, when costs totaled $1.7 billion. (Chicago Tribune, July 18)
Price increases have severely affected the staple items of the Cuban diet: chicken, rice and beans. The per-ton price of rice went from $525 last year to $1,100 this year; chicken went from $1,073 to $1,405; black beans from $830 to $1,308; red beans from $960 to $1,608; soy from $545 to $674, and peas from $568 to $660.
But Cuba has successfully confronted food insecurity before. The early 1990s saw the overthrow of the Soviet Union, Cuba’s main trading partner. The Clinton administration responded by tightening it’s economic blockade of the island. This combination created food shortages throughout the island.
According to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, Cubans went from eating an average of 3,004 calories a day in 1989 to only 2,323 in 1993, as shelves emptied of the Soviet goods that made up two-thirds of Cuba’s food. (International Herald Tribune, June 8)
The Cuban government took full responsibility and immediately took measures aimed at increasing yields in the Cuban country side while also implementing new urban farming techniques.
Marcio Porto, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization representative in Cuba, commented on the will of the Cuban government to tackle the food crisis and praised the technical cooperation the Cuban government has always offered to other Caribbean countries through FAO.
Lessons from the Special Period
During the 1990s, Cuba made great strides in the organic and urban farming, paving the way for more sustainable food production. Urban farming started in 1992, when the Cuban government started giving empty city lots to workers willing to farm them. Organic techniques were a response to the shortage of chemical fertilizers and pesticides. The experiment resulted in an explosion of city farming: By 1999, over 190,000 people had received urban spaces to cultivate in Cuban cities.
According to an Oxfam report, “Today half of the fresh produce consumed by two million Havana residents is grown by ‘nontraditional urban producers’ in abandoned lots and green spaces wedged into the crowded typography of the city.”
Urban farming not only provides jobs and fresh vegetables but it also cuts down on transportation costs. Customers in the neighborhood walk to their nearest urban farm instead of having trucks deliver products from the country side.
The movement also spread to the country side where chemical fertilizers were replaced with traditional farming techniques aimed at lowering the cost of production and increasing the quality of the produce. The Oxfam report states, “Organic amendments and bio-fertilizers, along with green manures, were applied on state farms on a massive scale in an attempt to recover exhausted soils and improve soils with low fertility.” Utilizing such innovative, sustainable farming practices, Cuban farms have actually been able to increase yields.
With the mass participation of the people, Cuba’s revolutionary government was able to weather the economic meltdown of the early 1990s. Centralized planning in the Cuban economy assured that every Cuban would be fed through the toughest of times.
Fifteen years later, the revolution’s innovations and sacrifices have paid off. Today, the average Cuban eats 3,547 calories a day—more than what the U.S. government recommends for its citizens. (International Herald Tribune, June 8)
Meanwhile, the irrationality and chaos of capitalism creates food shortages leading to hunger and death across the globe. Despite hundreds of millions of people living in hunger worldwide, the capitalist ruling class continues to turn food into fuel.
Socialist Cuba stands in stark contrast. Despite the U.S government’s criminal blockade, the Cuban government has excelled thanks to the revolutionary character of its people and their leadership.
At every step of the struggle, the people’s participation in decision-making has not only led to progress but also ingenuity. The hardships of Cuba’s special period would have destroyed virtually any capitalist economy in the world. Yet there were no riots or unrest in Cuba. The Cuban people and their revolutionary spirit triumphed then, and will triumph now over the latest food crisis.
