Since the food shortage caused by the collapse of the socialist trade bloc, Cubans have been looking for new ways to feed themselves.
In the late 1980s sugar and tobacco exports representing about 85 per cent of its trade income. The income was used to import oil and to finance Cuba's literacy, higher education, health care and housing programs, but it was also used to import food as a food shortages worsened.
Cubans still receive food rations of rice and other simple food. The rations and distribution system provide an equitable means of sharing what is available to prevent people from starving. Household incomes have little purchasing power for additional food. The new food markets are operating on supply and demand, with prices forced up due to supply shortages. The situation is now better than a couple of years ago, but the food crisis continues. More food is needed, more vacant land needs to be cultivated and the food gardeners need enhanced gardening skills.
These skills were disappearing in Havana's urban culture; getting dirty in the garden was not appealing to many urbanites. Cuba had never had the strong connection to kitchen gardens as the French or Italian traditions.
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With the collapse of Soviet trade, Cuba sought another pathway for urban
development which included the importation of one million bikes from China,
to reduce the dependence on oil imports, and the establishment of the urban
gardens program. This development process is more closely identified with
ecologically sustainable development than any other nation in the world.
The Cuban government supports the urban gardens with a promotional campaign that provides seventy Ministry of Agriculture advisers for urban areas and eight `seed houses' for the distribution of seed. Land is provided for people who request it, and Fidel Castro is even promoting a vegetarian diet. |
A backyard garden in Havana - photo by Luis Sanchez |
Lilia Díaz Machado, or `Tata', a 70-year-old gardener from Cerro, has been gardening for 30 years and feeds her extended family from a plot of land that lies at the back of the house and also produces a surplus for childcare centres. She grows a wide range of crops: corn, cassava, paw paw, pumpkin and squash, medicinal plants (oregano, parsley, Guava, coco, mint, cilantro, verbena), sweet potato, taro, and capsicum in rotation to help maintain soil fertility.
Tata comes from a campesino (peasant) family and says `I am really happy with my life. I am old and the only thing I wish is that I could live for another 30 years to keep on gardening'.
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Garden clubs exist throughout the city and provide information, seeds and other goods for the gardeners. The Plaza horticultural club has 30 gardeners. Six of the co-workers built a productive space on an old building and dump site and now keep rabbits, pigs, chickens and ducks as well as a wide range of fruits and vegetables: avocado, cabbage, guanabana (soursop), grapes, cucumbers, carrots, lettuce, pumpkin, peanuts, onions, banana. Their garden design won a recent competition. Food gardens are even appearing in the high density urban areas. Francisco Amable Santana Peñas has a garden on his roof in built-up Centro Havana. With help from his wife and grandson, Santana has transformed his 200-square-metre rooftop into a paradise of lush vines and vegetables. The grapevine grows up the outside of his apartment and covers much of his and the roofs of two neighbours. Last year they harvested one tonne of grapes and produced 400 litres of wine. Santana's vegetable garden consists of old car tyres filled with soil and compost. He gets the soil wherever he can, even from the scrapings off the tubers sold at the local market. Building the garden has been a slow process but a rewarding one. `When my plants suffer so do I but when they are healthy then so are we', says Santana. `I was born in the countryside and now I have finally been born again in the city.' Medicinal plants, or `green medicine', are also planted in the food gardens and empower people to take control of their health by growing their own medicine.
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A dwarf-variety banana tree in a food garden in Havana - very suitable for small plots of land backyard garden in Havana. Pumpkin on the ground. - photo by Wayne Wadsworth |
Urban food gardens are a powerful idea for cities, particularly those in poorer countries. Cities produce very little of their basic needs. They are resource sinks, sucking in food, energy, water and other material goods. The costs of this are high and include transport, roads and construction, fuel, refrigeration, storage, packaging, and the associated pollution. There are also costs in agricultural communities where food crops have been replaced by cash crops. Such communities often lose their community culture and their more sustainable land use practises.
But cities do not have to be represented by poverty and class division, the sprawl of shanty towns, unemployment, crime, drugs, sex tourism, garbage and traffic. Havana is now producing its own food and distributing it through local food markets, while retaining a lively culture with high standards of health, housing, and education but with low levels of consumption. Third world cities could see strategies for their own future by taking a closer look at Havana's food gardens. *
* - The Charter of Calcutta implores:
"We must cease seeing the city as a problem. We must see it as a solution."
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ACF
is working with Australia's permaculture movement on the Cuban
Permaculture Project, an overseas aid project that focuses on community
education, produces a quarterly magazine for gardeners and provides training
courses in food gardening, seed saving and permaculture. It is being
undertaken with the Cuban environment group, Fundación de la Naturaleza
y el Hombre, and the Federation of Cuban Women and the Cuban Ministry of
Agriculture.
The project evolved with the help of the many Australian travellers who had returned from Cuba wanting to support Cuba's radical development strategy. Further impetus came when an officer in a Cuban government department phoned the Permaculture office in Lismore seeking help with the teaching of gardening skills. Members of the permaculture movement responded and have played an effective role in Havana's garden education program. |
Refer to articles on permaculture courses in Havana for more information. |
The project is jointly funded by the Australian government's Agency for International Development (AusAID) and by public donations. Donations to the 'ACF Cuba Appeal' are tax deductible and are matched one-for-one by AusAID. The project needs $A25,000 a year for the next two years.
Australian project workers during 1995 and 1996 were supported on the project by the Overseas Service Bureau (OSB) and more than a dozen other Australians and other nationals have participated in Havana so far. OSB has an extensive program in the Central American region. It places project workers with a wide range of organisations covering many fields, including environment issues. OSB welcomes enquiries from people wishing to participate.
About the authors:
Web design thanks to Rodney Brown and
Adam Tiller. 10 April 1997.
Location of this web page:
http://www.peg.apc.org/~adamt/cuba/hab9606/hab9606.htm,
