Sustainable agriculture in Cuba.

1. Cuba
Food & Society
Karen Neunzig and Wendimere Reilly

2. Introduction
• Island in the Caribbean (93 miles from the
U.S.)
• Tropical climate
• abundant rainfall and fertile soil
• Population: 11,274,826
• 105th largest country in the world
• Primary export: Sugarcane
• Primary import: Fuel

3. Key Historical Features
• 1959- Cuban Revolution
• Castro overthrows Batista
• Cuba begins Agrarian Reforms
• U.S. begins gradual trade restrictions (sugar/oil)
• 1961-62: Bay of Pigs/Cuban Missile Crisis
• Cuba/Soviet trade relations strengthen (sugar/oil)
• 1989-91 Fall of the Soviet Bloc
• Cuba loses main source of imports/exports
• The “Special Period in Time of Peace” begins

4. Special Period in
Peacetime
• Prior to 1989 agriculture was produced on
a large scale utilizing conventional
methods
• Pesticides and fertilizers
• Fuel dependent farm equipment
• Labor force of unskilled farm workers
• Sugarcane was the primary commodity
crop
• Over 80% of government owned
farmland devoted to sugar production
• 75% of the total value of Cuban exports (Rosset, 1994)

5. Special Period in
Peacetime
• What happens when food systems
collapse?
• 70% reduction in available fertilizer
and pesticides
• 50% reduction in fuel for agriculture
(Rosset, 1994)

6. Low Input Farming
• Born out of necessity not consumer interest
• Research becomes a national priority
• Chemicals replaced with biopesticides
• microbes, integrated pest management
• crop rotation, disease resistant plants
• Fertilizers became scarce leading to the
introduction of biofertilizers
• composts, earthworms, and animal manures

7. Low Input Farming
• Farm equipment that
required fuel, tires, and other
parts were replaced with
animal traction
• Vacant lots in cities were
turned into urban gardening
projects
• A new system of farming,
“Agroecological Technology”
http://www.pfi.iastate.edu/Cuba/Cuba_6-21_LILIANA_Screen_House_Oxen_color.jpg
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8. Popular Rice Program
• Staple food of the Cuban diet
• Small scale rice production was one of the first
agriculture changes during the Special Period
• The Ministry of Agriculture made this a national priority
• The Rice Institute began offering technical support to
small growers in order to enhance yields
• Families were encouraged to start small rice plots to
ensure adequate supplies for their families and the
surplus was sold at farmer’s markets

9. System of Rice Intensification
• The “system of rice intensification” method (SRI)
embraced by government
• Originated in Madagascar
Method SRI Rice Conventional Rice
Seedlings 2 leaf-stage (8-10 days) 4 weeks
Spacing Single, 25cm apart Clumps
Soil Moist, aerated Flooded
Weeding/Additives Manual rotary weeder Pesticides/Fertilizers
Benefits Requires little training, inputs,
uses less water and seed
Less labor intensive
Table 1- Comparison of SRI and Conventional Rice Production

10. Rice
• Supporters of this method claim that it increases
yields with minimal inputs
Table 2- SRI yields compared with average yields in Cuba, by Province, 2003
Province No. of
trials
Av yield & range,
usual methods,
(t/ha)
SRI methods
(t/ha)
Increase (%)
Pinar del Rio 6 4.3 (2.7-6.6) 7.6 (4.7-12.0) 77
Provincia La Habana 4 4.9 (3.5-6.5) 8.1 (7.0-8.8) 65
Villa Clara 5 3.0 (1.7-6.1) 7.0 (5.0-12.2) 133
Sancti Spiritu 3 6.5 (4.5-7.6) 9.9 (6.5-11.8) 52
Camaguey 1 2.8 8.5 203
Holguin 5 5.9 (3.4-7.2) 8.7 (5.5-13.0) 47
Granma 2 2.6 (2.4-2.8) 5.4 (4.6-6.2) 108
Santiago de Cuba 2 2.6 (1.6-3.6) 3.6 (3.0-4.2) 39
Average 28 4.3 7.3 71

11. Intensification Farming
• Critics in the scientific community claim that there is a
lack of rigorously controlled experiments and that the
methods are difficult to duplicate in the lab
• This method is being studied in-depth by the Cornell
International Institute for Food, Agriculture and
Development
• Over 50 countries worldwide are experimenting with
this system
• Cuba is testing the system on sugarcane with positive
preliminary results
(Glover, 2001)

12. Social/Political/Economic
Implications
• Agroecological farming successful for small family farms
but presented unique challenges for large scale, state
owned farms
• State farm workers did not have the same skills as farmers
and scaling up agroecological technologies did not fit
nicely with systems designed for conventional agriculture
• In 1993, the Cuban government began turning many of
these large scale farms into Basic Units of Cooperative
Production (UBPC’s)
• The government maintained ownership and leased (for
free) small units to worker owned co-ops
• Co-ops were given quotas, additional yields were sold at
local markets and the workers kept the profits

13. Social/Political/Economic
Implications
• Things to consider:
• Just because people can survive using Agroecological
farming it is still labor intensive
• Would Publix, McDonalds, or Home Depot be a welcome
addition?
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14. Reportin
g Year
U.S. Dollar Value Of
TSRA-Authorized
Exports To Cuba
Ranking Based
On Export
Markets
2012 US $457,318,357.00 43rd (of 229)
2011 US $358,457,389.00 50th (of 232)
2010 US $366,467,782.00 45th (of 228)
2009 US $528,482,955.00 36th (of 232)
2008 US $710,086,323.00 29th (of 228)
2007 US $437,564,824.00 37th (of 230)
2006 US $340,433,442.00 34th (of 227)
2005 US $350,218,040.00 30th (of 228)
2004 US $391,990,382.00 25th (of 228)
2003 US $256,901,471.00 35th (of 219)
2002 US $138,634,784.00 50th (of 226)
2001
US $4,318,906.00
(December- 1st sales
under TSRA)
144th (of 226)
Total
TSRA
Sales
US$4,340,874,655.00
Table 3- US Exports to Cuba (primarily agriculture and medical supplies)

15. Nutritional Implications
Since the Special Period started in 1989…
• Food
• In 1989, calories consumed went from an
average of 3,000 calories a day to 2,000 (Kost,
1998)
• Although starvation was avoided, persistent
hunger suddenly became a daily experience
• Malnutrition in children was evident after just a
few weeks of these food shortages

16. Nutritional Implications
• Medication
• Many important medicines became virtually
unattainable
• The costs of medical products have increased
because the country had few potential
suppliers
• The resultant lack of food and medicine to
Cuba contributed to the worst epidemic of
neurological disease this century (Kirkpatrick, 1996)

17. Nutritional Implications
• Several public health catastrophes occurred
• An epidemic of blindness that was partially
attributed to a dramatic decrease in access to
nutrients
• An outbreak of the Guillaln-Barre syndrome
caused by lack of chlorination chemicals
• An epidemic of lye ingestion in toddlers due to
severe shortages of soap
(Barry, 2000)

18. Cuba Today
• In May 2012, Cuba announced that USD 450
million would be invested in rice production
support (Popular Rice Program) through 2016 (FAO,
2012)
• Purchase machinery and equipment
• Boost seed production
• Improve storage and processing capacity
• Research still being conducted to determine the
Popular Rice Programs success rates

19. Cuba Today
• Companion planting is being explored and is
growing in popularity
• The practice of growing plants close together to
benefit the development of one or both of the plants
• Integrative pest management and crop rotation
are still being utilized due to the continued lack of
access to fertilizers and pesticides
• 80% of Cuba’s production is now organic
• In the 1980s Cuba used 21,000 tons of pesticides,
and now only uses 1,000 tons
(Penn State University, 2012)

20. Cuba Today
• Meat production
• Drastically decreased during the Special Period due
to meat and dairy products being extremely fuel
dependent in production
• A notable shift in Cuban food habits occurred that
resulted in diets higher in fiber, consisting of more
fresh produce, and ultimately more vegan in
character
• Today, consumption of animal products is less than
half its previous level due to lost livestock production
(Copeland, 2011)

21. Cuba Today
• Nutrition
• Gradually improving
• In 2001 6% of all babies were born with
low birth weight (UNICEF, 2013)
• From 2008-2012 5.2% of all babies were
born with low birth weight (UNICEF, 2013)
• Life expectancy increased from 75 years
in 1994 to 79 years in 2011(The World Bank, 2014)

22. Cuba Today
• Nutrition
• Per capita caloric consumption has gradually
recovered from the 1990s but the Cuban diet
has changed forever
• Decrease of consumption of animal products
• More fruit and vegetable based diets
• During 1997-2002, there were declines in
deaths attributed to diabetes (51%),
coronary heart disease (35%) and stroke
(20%) (Franco, 2007)

23. Relationship between Food
and Society
• Food shapes a society, so when a populations food sources
are suddenly cut off there are many ramifications
• Food affects a societies social, political, economical and
nutritional statuses
• As a result of limited resources, Cuba adopted many
traditional farming techniques as well as inventing new ones
• During the transitional period from conventional farming,
they did exhibit significant nutritional decline, which is now
improving and is even better than it was before the transition
• Major shift in Cuban cuisine

24. In Conclusion
• Cuba has endured many hardships throughout
time and has responded to severe scarcity by
taking it upon themselves to assure survival
• Cuba has been viewed as an example of how to
respond to a sudden and severe shortage of
resources
• The progress they have made in agriculture since
the collapse of the Soviet Union has proven to the
world that sustainable agriculture in not
unattainable

25. References
• Kirkpatrick, AF. (1996) Role of the USA in shortage of food and
medicine in Cuba. The Lancet. 348 1489-91
http://www.cubasolidarity.net/Kirkpatrick-lancet.pdf
• Glover, D (2011) The System of Rice Intensification: Time for an
empirical turn. Wageningen Journal of Life Sciences 57:3 217-224
• Rice Research Institute. Review of results and progress with the
system of rice intensification during 2003.
http://sri.ciifad.cornell.edu/countries/cuba/index.html
• Barry, M. (2000) Effect of the U.S. Embargo and Economic Decline on
Health in Cuba. Annals of Internal Medicine. 132:2
http://annals.org/article.aspx?articleid=713236
• Penn State Community Garden. 2012. Intercropping, Companion
Planting, and Intensive Gardening [Internet]. Penn State University;
[cited 2012 June 10]. Available from:
https://sites.google.com/a/psu.edu/community-garden/intercropping-
and-companion-planting

26. References
• UNICEF. 2014. Cuba Statistics. [Internet]. Available from:
http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/cuba_statistics.html#122
• Copeland, C, Jolly, C, Thompson, H. 2011. The History and Potential of Trade
between Cuba and the US. [Internet]. Journal of Economics and Business.
Available from:http://www.auburn.edu/~thomph1/cubahistory.pdf
• The World Bank. 2014. Cuba. [Internet]. Available
from:http://data.worldbank.org/country/cuba
• FAO. 2012. Food Outlook: Global Market Analysis. [Internet]. Available from:
http://www.fao.org/docrep/016/al993e/al993e00.pdf
• Franco, M, et al. 2007. Impact of energy intake, physical activity, and population-
wide weight loss on cardiovascular disease and diabetes mortality in Cuba,
1980-2005. [Internet]. Available
from:http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17881386