This article is one of a series based on my trip to Cuba. I traveled on a People to People tour to Cuba called: Cuba Today, People and Society with Road Scholar.  www.roadscholar.org

Organic Farm in Havana

My New Year’s Resolution is to try to buy local produce and foods that are grown close to home. Purchasing food grown locally strengthens regional economies, supports family farms, provides delicious, “fresh-from-the-field” foods for consumers, preserves the local landscape, and can help foster a sense of community.  It also requires less energy consumption for refrigeration and transport. The inspiration for me to do this comes from the Cuban people. I went to Cuba last month. While there I learned that organic farming is huge on the island.  This happened by necessity.  The Cubans found themselves facing a food shortage in what they call their “special period”–the time in the early 1990’s when the Soviet Union dissolved and suddenly pulled out support to Cuba. Cuba lost 85% of its agricultural imports, foreign trade and petroleum.  Add to this the crippling effects of the U.S. embargo and the country’s food supply was hit very hard.  By necessity Cubans began growing their own food in urban gardens without pesticides or herbicides, mainly because there were none available.  The result was an increase in people in Havana and other cities growing organic food and eating locally.  The organic farming movement is evident everywhere. In America, eating organically and buying organically grown foods is still not mainstream and often very expensive.  But in Cuba it is the norm.  Cuba has one of the most successful and highly educated farming communities in the world.In Havana there are 8,000 gardens that produce broccoli, tomatoes, cabbage, lettuce, onions, bok choi and radishes.  With limited gasoline for transportation and refrigeration to bring food from the countryside, food production occurs in the cities. Local residents are planting food in every conceivable corner of Havana. Sadly, about three buildings a day collapse in Havana due to neglect and a crumbling infrastructure.  When a building collapses, the community clears the rubble, and plants a garden. Cuba’s government is supporting the organic food movement.  It is a model of what can happen if a government decides to put its energy behind non-toxic agriculture. Scientists there have developed biological pesticides and fertilizers putting Cuba way ahead of the rest of the world in the area of organic farming. Some of the techniques used by Cuban gardeners are traditional ones, such as the use of worms. Red worms are used to produce worm poo as the worms feed on kitchen scraps.  This worm waste is then applied as fertilizer.  It is high in nitrogen and is quickly accessible by crops.  Another technique is inter-planting.  This technique discourages pests because diverse crops are planted together, thus discouraging bugs from feasting on the single crop planted in a garden.  Cuban gardeners are also very good scientists.  They observe problems in their gardens and apply scientific methods of observation and trial and error to trouble shoot problems when they occur.    For example if a gardener is having trouble with aphids, the farmer might wash the plant and then observe if wasps or lady bugs show up a few days later. They then analyze what happened and apply new techniques. The result is that Cuban people are eating better than before.  About twenty years ago, food was so scare people were on the brink of starvation. But now, some individuals are even making a living growing vegetables, and doing so with the government’s blessing. The social and economic benefits of growing and buying local are being realized.  But there is one more amazing situation that has occurred.  Inadvertently, the communist government, along with the US embargo and the withdrawal of Russian support has made Cuba’s coral reefs the best in the world. This is a result of the strict limit on the availability of fertilizer and pesticides.  By not using such toxins, fresh water that flows to the sea from Cuban soil does not contain nitrates and other harmful chemicals.  In other parts of the world, coral reefs have been severely compromised by such runoff, but the levels of pollution are so low off the coast of Cuba, the coral is thriving. For more information about this “accident” watch the PBS episode of Nature called, The Accidental Eden http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/lessons/reef-madness/enhanced-video-resource/7397/