Chapter 12, pp. 203-213, in: Hungry for Profit: The Agribusiness Threat to Farmers, Food and the Environment, edited by Fred Magdoff, John Bellamy Foster and Frederick H. Buttel (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2000).
Our global food system is in the midst of a multifaceted
crisis, with ecological, economic, and social dimensions. To overcome that
crisis, political and social changes are needed to allow the widespread
development of alternatives.
The current food system is productive—there should be no
doubt about that—as per capita food produced in the world has increased by 15
percent over the past thirty-five years. But as that production is in ever
fewer hands, and costs ever more in economic and ecological terms, it becomes
harder and harder to address the basic problems of hunger and food access in
the short term, let alone in a sustainable fashion. In the last twenty years
the number of hungry people in the world—excluding China—has risen by 60
million (by contrast, in China the number of hungry people has fallen
dramatically).
Ecologically, there are impacts of industrial-style farming
on groundwater through pesticide and fertilizer runoff, on biodiversity through
the spread of monoculture and a narrowing genetic base, and on the very
capacity of agroecosystems to be productive into the future.
Economically, production costs rise as farmers are forced to
use ever more expensive machines and farm chemicals, while crop prices continue
a several-decade-long downward trend, causing a cost-price squeeze which has
led to the loss of untold tens of millions of farmers worldwide to
bankruptcies. Socially, we have the concentration of farmland in fewer and
fewer hands as low crop prices make farming on a small scale unprofitable
(despite higher per acre total productivity of small farms), and agribusiness
corporations extend their control over more and more basic commodities.
Clearly the dominant corporate food system is not capable of
adequately addressing the needs of people or of the environment. Yet there are
substantial obstacles to the widespread adoption of alternatives. The greatest
obstacles are presented by political-corporate power and vested interests, yet
at times the psychological barrier to believing that the alternatives can work
seems almost as difficult to overcome. The oft-repeated challenge is:
"Could organic farming (or agroecology, local production, small farms,
farming without pesticides) ever really feed the entire population of a
country?" Recent Cuban history—the overcoming of a food crisis through
self-reliance, small farms and agroecological technology—shows us that the
alternatives can indeed feed a nation, and thus provides a crucial case study
for the ongoing debate.
A Brief History
Economic development in Cuba was molded by two external
forces between the 1959 revolution and the 1989-90 collapses of trading
relations with the Soviet bloc. One was the U.S. trade embargo, part of an
effort to isolate the island economically and politically. The other was Cuba's
entry into the Soviet bloc's international trade alliance with relatively
favorable terms of trade. The U.S. embargo essentially forced Cuba to turn to
the Soviet bloc, while the terms of trade offered by the latter opened the
possibility of more rapid development on the island than in the rest of Latin
America and the Caribbean.
Thus Cuba was able to achieve a more complete and rapid
modernization than most other developing countries. In the 1980s it ranked
number one in the region in the contribution of industry to its economy and it
had a more mechanized agricultural sector than any other Latin American
country. Nevertheless, some of the same contradictions that modernization
produced in other third world countries were apparent in Cuba, with Cuba's
development model proving ultimately to be of the dependent type. Agriculture
was defined by extensive monocrop production of export crops and a heavy
dependence on imported agrichemicals, hybrid seeds, machinery, and petroleum.
While industrialization was substantial by regional standards, Cuban industry
depended on many imported inputs.
The Cuban economy as a whole was thus characterized by the
contradiction between its relative modernity and its function in the Soviet
bloc's division of labor as a supplier of raw agricultural commodities and
minerals, and a net importer of both manufactured goods and foodstuffs. In
contrast to the situation faced by most third world countries, this international
division of labor actually brought significant benefits to the Cuban people.
Prior to the collapse of the socialist bloc, Cuba had achieved high marks for
per capita GNP, nutrition, life expectancy, and women in higher education, and
was ranked first in Latin America for the availability of doctors, low infant
mortality, housing, secondary school enrollment, and attendance by the
population at cultural events.
The Cuban achievements were made possible by a combination
of the government's commitment to social equity and the fact that Cuba received
far more favorable terms of trade for its exports than did the hemisphere's
other developing nations. During the 1980s Cuba received an average price for
its sugar exports to the Soviet Union that was 5.4 times higher than the world
price. Cuba also was able to obtain Soviet petroleum in return, part of which
was re-exported to earn convertible currency. Because of the favorable terms of
trade for sugar, its production far outweighed that of food crops. About three
times as much land was devoted to sugar in 1989 as was used for food crops,
contributing to a pattern of food dependency, with as much as 57 percent of the
total calories in the Cuban diet coming from imports.
The revolutionary government had inherited an agricultural
production system strongly focused on export crops grown on highly concentrated
land. The first agrarian reform of 1959 converted most of the large cattle
ranches and sugarcane plantations into state farms. Under the second agrarian reform
in 1962, the state took control of 63 percent of all cultivated land.
Even before the revolution, individual peasant producers
were a small part of the agricultural scene. The rural economy was dominated by
export plantations, and the population as a whole was highly urbanized. That
pattern intensified in subsequent years, and by the late 1980s fully 69 percent
of the island's population lived in urban areas. As late as 1994 some 80
percent of the nation's agricultural land consisted of large state farms, which
roughly correspond to the expropriated plantation holdings of the
pre-revolutionary era. Only 20 percent of the agricultural land was in the
hands of small farmers, split almost equally among individual holders and
cooperatives, yet this 20 percent produced more than 40 percent of domestic
food production. The state farm sector and a substantial portion of the
cooperatives were highly modernized, with large areas of monocrops worked under
heavy mechanization, fertilizer and pesticide use, and large-scale irrigation.
This style of farming, originally copied from the advanced capitalist countries
by the Soviet Union, was highly dependent on imports of machinery, petroleum,
and chemicals. When trade collapsed with the socialist bloc, the degree to which
Cuba relied on monocrop agriculture proved to be a major weakness of the
revolution.
Onset of the Crisis
When trade relations with the Soviet bloc crumbled in late
1989 and 1990, the situation turned desperate. In 1991 the government declared
the "Special Period in Peacetime," which basically put the country on
a wartime economy style austerity program. There was an immediate 53 percent
reduction in oil imports that not only affected fuel availability for the
economy, but also reduced to zero the foreign exchange that Cuba had formerly
obtained via the re-export of petroleum. Imports of wheat and other grains for
human consumption dropped by more than 50 percent, while other foodstuffs
declined even more. Cuban agriculture was faced with a drop of more than 80
percent in the availability of fertilizers and pesticides, and more than 50
percent in fuel and other energy sources produced by petroleum.
Suddenly, a country with an agricultural sector
technologically similar to California's found itself almost without chemical
inputs, with sharply reduced access to fuel and irrigation, and with a collapse
in food imports. In the early 1990s average daily caloric and protein intake by
the Cuban population may have been as much as 30 percent below levels in the
1980s. Fortunately, Cuba was not totally unprepared to face the critical
situation that arose after 1989. It had, over the years, emphasized the
development of human resources, and therefore had a cadre of scientists and
researchers who could come forward with innovative ideas to confront the
crisis. While Cuba has only 2 percent of the population of Latin America, it
has almost 11 percent of the scientists.
Alternative Technologies
In response to this crisis the Cuban government launched a
national effort to convert the nation's agricultural sector from high input
agriculture to low input, self-reliant farming practices on an unprecedented
scale. Because of the drastically reduced availability of chemical inputs, the
state hurried to replace them with locally produced, and in most cases
biological, substitutes. This has meant biopesticides (microbial products) and
natural enemies to combat insect pests, resistant plant varieties, crop
rotations and microbial antagonists to combat plant pathogens, and better
rotations, and cover cropping to suppress weeds. Synthetic fertilizers have
been replaced by biofertilizers, earthworms, compost, other organic
fertilizers, natural rock phosphate, animal and green manures, and the
integration of grazing animals. In place of tractors, for which fuel, tires,
and spare parts were largely unavailable, there has been a sweeping return to
animal traction.
Small Farmers Respond to the Crisis
When the collapse of trade and subsequent scarcity of inputs
occurred in 1989-90, yields fell drastically throughout the country. The first
problem was that of producing without synthetic chemical inputs or tractors.
Gradually the national ox herd was built up to provide animal traction as a
substitute for tractors, and the production of biopesticides and biofertilizers
was rapidly stepped up. Finally, a series of methods like vermicomposting
(earthworm composting) of residues and green manuring became widespread. But
the impact of these technological changes across sub-sectors of Cuban
agriculture was highly variable. The drop-off of yields in the state sector
industrial-style farms that average thousands of hectares has been resistant to
recovery, with production seriously stagnating well below pre-crisis levels for
exports crops. Yet the small farm or peasant sector (20 percent of farmed land)
responded rapidly by quickly boosting production above previous levels. How can
we explain the difference between the state- and small-farm sectors?
It really was not all that difficult for the small farm
sector to effectively produce with fewer inputs. After all, today’s small
farmers are the descendants of generations of small farmers, with long family
and community traditions of low-input production. They basically did two
things: remembered the old techniques—like intercropping and manuring—that
their parents and grandparents had used before the advent of modern chemicals,
and simultaneously incorporated new biopesticides and biofertilizers into their
production practices.
State Farms Incompatible with the Alternative Technologies
The problems of the state sector, on the other hand, were a
combination of low worker productivity, a problem pre-dating the Special
Period, and the complete inability of these immense and technified management
units to adapt to low-input technology. With regard to the productivity
problem, planners became aware several years ago that the organization of work
on state farms was profoundly alienating in terms of the relationship between
the agricultural worker and the land. Large farms of thousands of hectares had
their work forces organized into teams that would prepare the soil in one area,
move on to plant another, weed still another, and later harvest an altogether
different area. Almost never would the same person both plant and harvest the
same area. Thus no one ever had to confront the consequences of doing something
badly or, conversely, enjoy the fruits of his or her own labor.
In an effort to create a more intimate relationship between
farm workers and the land, and to tie financial incentives to productivity, the
government began several years ago to experiment with a program called
"linking people with the land." This system made small work teams
directly responsible for all aspects of production in a given parcel of land,
allowing remuneration to be directly linked to productivity. The new system was
tried before the Special Period on a number of state farms, and rapidly led to
enormous increases in production. Nevertheless it was not widely implemented at
the time.
In terms of technology, scale effects are very different for
conventional chemical management and for low external input alternatives. Under
conventional systems, a single technician can manage several thousand hectares
on a "recipe" basis by simply writing out instructions for a
particular fertilizer formula or pesticide to be applied with machinery on the
entire area. Not so for agroecological farming. Whoever manages the farm must
be intimately familiar with the ecological heterogeneity of each individual
patch of soil. The farmer must know, for example, where organic matter needs to
be added, and where pest and natural enemy refuges and entry points are. This
partially explains the inability of the state sector to raise yields with alternative
inputs. Like the productivity issue, it can only be effectively addressed
through a re-linking of people with the land.
By mid-1993, the state was faced with a complex reality.
Imported inputs were largely unavailable, but nevertheless the small farmer
sector had effectively adapted to low input production (although a secondary
problem was acute in this sector, namely diversion of produce to the black
market). The state sector, on the other hand, was proving itself to be an
ineffective "white elephant" in the new historical conjuncture,
incapable of adjusting. The earlier success of the experimental
"linking" program, however, and the success of the peasant sector,
suggested a way out. In September 1993 Cuba began radically reorganizing its
production in order to create the small-scale management units that are
essential for effective organic-style farming. This reorganization has centered
on the privatization and cooperativization of the unwieldy state sector.
The process of linking people with the land thus culminated
in 1993, when the Cuban government issued a decree terminating the existence of
state farms, turning them into Basic Units of Cooperative Production (UBPCs), a
form of worker-owned enterprise or cooperative. The 80 percent of all farmland
that was once held by the state, including sugarcane plantations, has now
essentially been turned over to the workers.
The UBPCs allow collectives of workers to lease state
farmlands rent free, in perpetuity. Members elect management teams that determine
the division of jobs, what crops will be planted on which parcels, and how much
credit will be taken out to pay for the purchase of inputs. Property rights
remain in the hands of the state, and the UBPCs must still meet production
quotas for their key crops, but the collectives are owners of what they
produce. Perhaps most importantly, what they produce in excess of their quotas
can now be freely sold on the newly reopened farmers markets. This last reform,
made in 1994, offered a price incentive to farmers both to sell their produce
through legal channels rather than the black market, and also to make effective
use of the new technologies.
The pace of consolidation of the UBPCs has varied greatly in
their first years of life. Today one can find a range from those where the only
change is that the old manager is now an employee of the workers, to those that
truly function as collectives, to some in which the workers are parceling the
farms into small plots worked by groups of friends. In almost all cases, the
effective size of the management unit has been drastically reduced. It is still
too early to tell toward what final variety of structures the UBPCs will
evolve. But it is clear that the process of turning previously alienated farm
workers into farmers will take some time—it simply cannot be accomplished
overnight—and many UBPCs are struggling. Incentives are a nagging problem. Most
UBPCs are stuck with state production contracts for export crops like sugar and
citrus. These still have fixed, low prices paid by state marketing agencies, in
contrast to the much higher prices that can be earned for food crops. Typical
UBPCs, not surprisingly then, have low yields in their export crops, but also
have lucrative side businesses selling food produced on spare land or between
the rows of their citrus or sugarcane.
Food Shortage Overcome
By mid-1995 the food shortage had been overcome, and the
vast majority of the population no longer faced drastic reductions of their
basic food supply. In the 1996-97 growing season Cuba recorded its highest-ever
production levels for ten of the thirteen basic food items in the Cuban diet.
The production increases came primarily from small farms, and in the case of
eggs and pork, from booming backyard production. The proliferation of urban
farmers who produce fresh produce has also been extremely important to the
Cuban food supply. The earlier food shortages and the rise in food prices
suddenly turned urban agriculture into a very profitable activity for Cubans,
and once the government threw its full support behind a nascent urban gardening
movement, it exploded to near epic proportions. Formerly vacant lots and
backyards in all Cuban cities now sport food crops and farm animals, and fresh
produce is sold from private stands throughout urban areas at prices
substantially below those prevailing in the farmers markets. There can be no
doubt that urban farming, relying almost exclusively on organic techniques, has
played a key role in assuring the food security of Cuban families over the past
two to three years.
An Alternative Paradigm?
To what extent can we see the outlines of an alternative
food system paradigm in this Cuban experience? Or is Cuba just such a unique
case in every way that we cannot generalize its experiences into lessons for
other countries? The first thing to point out is that contemporary Cuba turned
conventional wisdom completely on its head. We are told that small countries
cannot feed themselves, that they need imports to cover the deficiency of their
local agriculture. Yet Cuba has taken enormous strides toward self-reliance
since it lost its key trade relations. We hear that a country can't feed its
people without synthetic farm chemicals, yet Cuba is virtually doing so. We are
told that we need the efficiency of large-scale corporate or state farms in
order to produce enough food, yet we find small farmers and gardeners in the
vanguard of Cuba's recovery from a food crisis. In fact, in the absence of
subsidized machines and imported chemicals, small farms are more efficient than
very large production units. We hear time and again that international food aid
is the answer to food shortages—yet Cuba has found an alternative in local
production.
Abstracting from that experience, the elements of an alternative
paradigm might therefore be:
Agroecological technology instead of chemicals: Cuba has
used intercropping, locally produced biopesticdes, compost, and other
alternatives to synthetic pesticides and fertilizers.
Fair Prices for Farmers: Cuban farmers stepped up production
in response to higher crop prices. Farmers everywhere lack incentive to produce
when prices are kept artificially low, as they often are. Yet when given an
incentive, they produce, regardless of the conditions under which that
production must take place.
Redistribution of Land: Small farmers and gardeners have
been the most productive of Cuban producers under low-input conditions. Indeed,
smaller farms worldwide produce much more per unit area than do large farms. In
Cuba redistribution was relatively easy to accomplish because the major part of
the land reform had already occurred, in the sense that there were no landlords
to resist further change.
Greater Emphasis on Local Production: People should not have
to depend on the vagaries of prices in the world economy, long distance
transportation, and super power "goodwill" for their next meal.
Locally and regionally produced food offers greater security, as well as
synergistic linkages to promote local economic development. Furthermore such
production is more ecologically sound, as the energy spent on international
transport is wasteful and environmentally unsustainable. By promoting urban
farming, cities and their surrounding areas can be made virtually
self-sufficient in perishable foods, be beautified, and have greater employment
opportunities. Cuba gives us a hint of the underexploited potential of urban
farming.
Cuba in its Special Period has clearly been in a unique
situation with respect to not being able to use power machinery in the fields,
forcing them to seek alternatives such as animal traction. It is unlikely that
either Cuba or any other country at its stage of development would choose to
abandon machine agriculture to this extent unless compelled to do so. Yet there
are important lessons here for countries struggling to develop. Relatively
small-scale farming, even using animals for traction, can be very productive
per unit of land, given technical support. And it is next to impossible to have
ecologically sound farming at an extremely large scale. Although it is
undeniable that for countries wishing to develop industry and at the same time
grow most of their own food, some mechanization of agriculture will be needed,
it is crucial to recognize—and the Cuban example can help us to understand
this–that modest-sized family farms and cooperatives that use reasonably sized
equipment can follow ecologically sound practices and have increased labor
productivity.
The Cuban experience illustrates that we can feed a nation's
population well with a small- or medium-sized farm model based on appropriate
ecological technology, and in doing so we can become more self-reliant in food
production. Farmers must receive higher returns for their produce, and when
they do they will be encouraged to produce. Capital intensive chemical
inputs—most of which are unnecessary—be largely dispensed with. The important
lessons from Cuba that we can apply elsewhere, then, are agroecology, fair
prices, land reform, and local production, including urban agriculture.
Peter M. Rosset is co-director of Food First/The Institute
for Food and Development Policy < http://www.foodfirst.org
>. He has a Ph.D. in agricultural ecology and teaches at Stanford
University.
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