[NYTr] CUBA: ‘If Worked Properly, the Land Can Produce Anything’

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

InterPress Service - Aug 8, 2007
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=38834

CUBA: "If Worked Properly, the Land Can Produce Anything"

by Patricia Grogg

HAVANA, Aug 8 (IPS) - "If you work it properly, the land here can
produce anything, and with a guaranteed market. Cuba is an agricultural
country. We should not have to import food," says Rubén Torres, who has
made a success of farming outside of the city of Santa Clara in central
Cuba. But Cuba’s food imports grew 35 percent over the past two years,
according to government reports from last December. These figures,
along with the rise in prices on the international market, prompted
acting President Raúl Castro to warn that it is essential to boost
agricultural production.

Torres works his 17-hectare farm mainly with natural methods, using
organic fertilisers and pesticides, and oxen to plow.

"This season I used around 26 tons of earthworm humus on my fields and
I sold the rest to other farmers in the area," he told IPS in a
telephone interview.

His crops include vegetables, rice, coconuts and guava fruit. He
belongs to the local Credit and Services Cooperatives (CCS), sells most
of his products to the state, and defends ecological farming practices
because "they improve and enrich the soil."

Torres said it is important to fertilise land with organic matter,
especially since most private farmers in Cuba today have small farms of
less than two hectares, which are overworked.

"Besides, the lack of inputs (like chemical fertilisers) has helped
convince more people about the advantages of agroecology," he commented.

The degradation of soil is one of the environmental challenges faced by
Cuba in terms of making agriculture sustainable. Experts blame the
situation on Cuba’s sugarcane monoculture model, which has marked the
economy of this Caribbean island nation since the 18th century.

"The wealth of our soils and a large part of our biodiversity have left
Cuba along with each grain of sugar that we export to, among other
things, buy food," complained agricultural engineer María Caridad Cruz
in an article published in the Cuban magazine Temas.

"It has gradually disappeared with all of the vegetation we have cut
down and with the agricultural techniques we have used," she added.

According to the agronomist, around 75 percent of Cuba’s farmland is
degraded to some degree, and there are three million hectares with low
fertility and 4.6 million with extremely low content of organic matter,
while salinity affects one million hectares and medium to severe
erosion affects 2.5 million hectares.

At the same time, given its high level of dependence on imports of
agricultural inputs, the farming industry is among the sectors hit
hardest by the financial restrictions adopted by the socialist
government during the economic crisis that broke out in the early
1990s, euphemistically referred to as the "special period" which, as
Raúl Castro clarified on Jul. 26, has not yet come to an end.

Between 1989 and 1993, Cuba’s gross domestic product shrank 35
percent, while value-added agriculture declined by 52 percent,
basically due to the abrupt cut-off of supplies from what had been the
country’s main sources, the Soviet Union and the East European
socialist bloc, said Cruz.

To deal with the crisis, which was caused mainly by the 1991 collapse
of the Soviet Union and the East European socialist bloc, the
agriculture industry underwent far-reaching changes.

These involved new forms of land ownership and administration,
including the 1993 creation of Basic Units of Cooperative Production
(UBPC), whose members have free usufruct of the land they work, for an
indefinite period.

At the same time, a programme of land grants to families was launched,
also involving free use of land, with the aim of bolstering production
for the domestic market and increasing output of export products like
tobacco and coffee.

These new forms of land tenure and production were added to the Credit
and Services Cooperatives (CCSs) and Agricultural Production
Cooperatives (CPAs) which have existed in Cuba since the first agrarian
reform, that distributed approximately 20 percent of the country’s
farmland to 200,000 people in 1959, after the revolution led by Fidel
Castro.

The CCSs were created on the basis of associations of small farmers,
who continued to own their land but grouped together with others to
obtain better access to new technologies and to financing and markets.

The CPAs also emerged from associations of small agricultural
producers. Their initial contribution was based on the sale of their
land and other means of production to the cooperatives, which then
owned and worked the land collectively.

The CPAs also brought their members technological, financial and market
benefits.

According to official data from 2006, more than 60 percent of land in
Cuba is arable. But of the 6.6 million hectares of farmland, only 3.1
million are currently under cultivation, of which approximately 1.2
million are planted in sugar cane, 180,000 in rice and 806,300 in a
variety of vegetables, fruits and grains.

>From the point of view of property ownership, 449,400 hectares on which
food for domestic consumption is produced are owned by individual
farmers or members of CCSs, 182,800 hectares are worked by the Basic
Units of Cooperative Production (UBPCs), 77,000 belong to the CPAs and
276,700 are owned by state-run companies.

Last year was a good year in terms of rainfall and lack of heavy storms
in Cuba. Nevertheless, crop yields (excluding sugar cane) dropped 7.3
percent from 2005, when the island was suffering from severe drought.
The livestock sector and dairy production fared no better.

"Necessary structural and conceptual changes will have to be
introduced" to increase production, said Raúl Castro, who also
mentioned the need to provide incentives for successful farmers.

To that end, the government began in July to pay higher prices to
producers of beef and dairy products, and during the first half of the
year paid off bulky debts to farmers and adopted measures to keep from
falling into arrears again.

A Cuban researcher who preferred to remain anonymous told IPS that it
would be good for the agricultural industry, as well as other sectors
of the Cuban economy, to open up to foreign capital, in order to gain
capital, technology and markets. "There is potential for that," he
commented.

He also suggested the creation of a market of inputs, equipment and
tools for farmers to directly purchase what they needed, something that
does not currently exist. In addition, he recommended fomenting greater
participation and a stronger sense of belonging for the members of
cooperatives.

He further called for "a process of decentralisation…because it is
easier to seek solutions at the local level. Besides, what is good for
one province might not be good for another," he said.

Cuban officials have not concealed their concern over the rise in
import costs caused by the high international prices of basic products
like powdered milk (5,200 dollars a ton), milled rice (435 dollars a
ton) or frozen chicken, the cost of which has soared to 1,186 dollars a
ton from 500 dollars a ton just a few years ago. (END/2007)