TravelGuide-Alamar-2016-web

96 | the Alamar travel guide
9.4 Propaganda board in Havana, Cuba, to
keep up people’s spirit
Proving that necessity is the mother of
invention people found new alternative
ways of feeding themselves. Without
government direction people spontaneously
started growing their own food wherever
they could. Farmers, scientists and
planners developed alternative agricultural
technologies to battle insects and diseases,
to compensate for the missing chemicals
and other imported products. Land was
switched from monoculture for export
to diverse food production aiming at
self-sufficiency.
During the last twenty years, Cuba has
developped one of the most succesful
examples of urban agriculture in the world.
Havana, with a population of over two
million people, has played a prominent
role in the evolution of this type of organic
urban agriculture. In the ciyu, urban farms
supply 90 percent or more of all the fresh
vegetables consumed. Inside the city edges
the neighbourhood of Alamar stands
out due to its impressive amount of food
production initiatives.
Havana today
In Havana and in particular in Alamar there
is special emphasis on production without
external inputs (as these were not available
and still today are rare), which resulted
in highly effective organic systems. In the
beginning many new producers had no
experience in the production of vegetables
on small plots. While urban residents
built community gardens to meet their
own immediate needs, the government
undertook a sweeping national agrarian reform
program. Producer were put in connection,
were offered training and were distributed
seeds and tools. The large, Soviet-model state
farms were broken into smaller, farmer-run
cooperatives. The state started to set up an
infrastructure of organic compost and organic
pest and disease control centers to help farmers
make the transition away from chemicals. To
give farmers incentives to grow produce for the
domestic market, the government allowed the
creation of farmers’ markets in the cities, a break
from the formerly state-dominated food system.
As a result, urban agriculture grew dramatically.
It is currently estimated that there are at least
350,000 urban farmers who cultivate more than
70,000 hectares in the country. While 4,000 tons
of vegetables were harvested in Cuban cities
in 1994, the Ministry of Agriculture reported
that during the first 3 months of 2009 the
total harvest of vegetables exceeded 400,000
tons; this is what contributes greatly to food
self-sufficiency of Cuba. Havana provides an
example of a systematic approach to rethinking
urban landscapes for productive means: food
production infrastructure was dug into the
existing city fabric, with interventions that
ranged in size from backyard gardens, to large
peri-urban farms.
This combination of top-down state support and
bottom-up citizen participation has proven to be
wildly successful.
Perhaps, most significantly, daily caloric intake
is back to its 1989 level and, in a
sign of restored prosperity, some
Cubans are beginning to worry
about obesity. And all of this has
occurred using just a fraction of
the chemicals that agriculture in
the “developed” world depends
on.
But, beyond the government press
releasing brochures with images
of gardens next to highways, and
international studies by foreign
professionals, does this system
really work for ordinary Cubans?
The answer is yes and this guide
will help you better understand
this successful system.