THE NATURE OF THINGS
(Sunday July 30 at 7pm on CBC-TV, repeating Wednesday August 2 at 10pm ET/PT on CBC Newsworld)

CUBA: THE ACCIDENTAL REVOLUTION (Part 1)

Cuba: The Accidental Revolution are two one-hour documentaries celebrating the country's success in providing for itself in the face of a massive economic crisis, and how its latest revolutions - an agricultural revolution and a revolution in science and medicine - are having repercussions around the world.

Cuba:The Accidental Revolution (Part 1) examines Cuba's response to the food crisis created by the collapse of the Soviet Bloc in 1989. At one time Cuba's agrarian culture was as conventional as the rest of the world. It experienced its first “Green Revolution” when Russia was supplying Cuba with chemical and mechanical “inputs.” However, the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989 ended all of that, and almost overnight threw Cuba's whole economic system into crisis. Factories closed, food supplies plummeted. Within a year the country had lost over 80% of its foreign trade. With the loss of their export markets and the foreign exchange to pay for imports, Cuba was unable to feed its population and the country was thrown into a crisis. The average daily caloric intake of Cubans dropped by a third.

Without fertilizer and pesticides, Cubans turned to organic methods. Without fuel and machinery parts, Cubans turned to oxen. Without fuel to transport food, Cubans started to grow food in the cities where it is consumed. Urban gardens were established in vacant lots, school playgrounds, patios and back yards. As a result Cuba created the largest program in sustainable agriculture ever undertaken. By 1999 Cuba's agricultural production had recovered and in some cases reached historic levels.

For more information, read an interview with Dr. Fernando Funes Sr., a researcher at the Pasture and Forage Institute (IIPF) in Havana:

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It's something Cuba can show to the world and share even with more developed countries such as Canada and that how many other countries can modesty learn from Cuba. From things we can do in a more efficient way, more economical and on top of that healthier which is also very important.

It's also compatible with the environment without having to use oil or the fossil energy which is being wasted out, and also the subsoil contamination under process, as well as the air and our environment.

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[ 30 March 2007: Message edited by: M. Spector ]

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I had read, as you may have, articles about Cuban farming that read something like, "Gee whiz, isn't it fascinating that Cuba has gone organic!" I'm not much of a gee-whiz person. I'm pretty skeptical of success stories because they usually have some sort of hidden subsidy behind them, and they usually fall apart after a while.

I had also read about political repression of dissidents and the lack of decent jobs. Driving into Havana from the airport one can't miss the smoke-belching cars and the bleakness of deteriorating buildings and crumbling concrete.

But then the magic starts to show. I'm going to pretty much stick to the food system in this article, but first I have to at least mention a few other observations: the stunningly beautiful old part of Havana, puppet shows in the street, outdoor galleries of paintings, and pervasive music mixed with dance from cultural traditions that run far deeper than my own Anglo-Saxon roots.

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(written in May, 2000 by Laura J. Enríquez,
Department of Sociology, University of California
Berkeley.)

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The urgency of Cuba's agricultural crisis of the early to mid-1990s highlights in a dramatic fashion the fundamental weaknesses inherent in the classical (socialist) model of development that its government adopted more than three decades ago. That model, whose applicability in more developed countries is even open to question, heightened many of the problems already existing in Cuban agriculture. It increased the country's external dependence, while reinforcing its reliance on one crop to fuel international economic relations. At the same time, it exacerbated the rural exodus that had been initiated by the spread of agroexport production, creating a situation in which, once jobs were available in agricultural production, there were few people to fill them.

The transformation that is currently underway in Cuban agriculture is designed to resolve a number of the dilemmas produced by Cuba's classical model of development. The changes that compose it are quite daring in nature and scope. In addition to perhaps fulfilling its promise of providing a new stimulus to that country's agricultural production, the maturation of this transformation will allow us to assess the potential inherent in Cuba's new approach to agriculture for offering policy-oriented and theoretical alternatives for those concerned with agricultural development elsewhere in the Third World.

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Originally posted by M. Spector:
Thank Zeus for the CBC!

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PAGAN!

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Workers in any capitalist country know that when their bosses start making proposals to “restructure” production and increase efficiency, the last thing they have in mind is the well-being of the producers. Words like “downsizing,” “rationalization,” “productivity,” “competitiveness,” and “modernization” have become synonyms for brutal speedup, layoffs, wage cuts, longer workdays, union busting, and social devastation.

The leadership in Cuba has set out to demonstrate that none of this will be the case in the cutback of the sugar industry, a restructuring within which workers and their organizations are helping shape each decision and supervising the implementation of each step.

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All former sugar workers have been given a lifetime guarantee by the government that they will continue to receive no less than the wage they were earning as a sugar worker, whether they go to school, take a new job, or do both. Each also remains a member of the National Sugar Workers Union, regardless of their current job....

In a speech given in February 2003 to an international conference of teachers in Havana, Castro said, “Since education is the instrument par excellence in the search for equality, well-being, and social justice, you can better understand why I describe what is taking place today in the search for higher objectives in Cuban education as a profound revolution.

“The very material future of our people is to be based on knowledge and culture,” Castro said.

“In the midst of a colossal world economic crisis, our country is advancing on a number of fronts…. Possibly the boldest decision recently adopted has been that of turning study into a form of employment, a principle that made it possible to close down 70 sugar mills — the least efficient ones — whose hard-currency costs were higher than the income they generated.”

“Some proclaimed that the end had come for the ideas of socialism,” Castro noted to the workers in Artemisa. Yet here they will find a country that is “doing things that countries living under the capitalist system could never even dream of doing.”

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Possibly the boldest decision recently adopted has been that of turning study into a form of employment,

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The Cuban Biotech Revolution (Dec. 2004)

Cuba sells its medical expertise (Nov. 2003)

Excerpts:

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The export of pharmaceutical products, vaccines and biotechnology helps to pay for the growing costs of funding medical research and a free health system with comprehensive coverage.
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Vaccines
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Since the end of Soviet aid in 1989, and the acute economic crisis of the 1990s, Cuba has seen the excellence of its medico-scientific institutions as a strategic resource for developing new medical products for export.

The country's first breakthrough in medical research was its discovery and patenting of meningitis-B vaccine in late 1980s. It has been successfully exported to cope with epidemics in South American countries including Brazil and Argentina.

The vaccine has now been licensed to GlaxoSmithKline who will now market it in Europe and it is hoped eventually in the USA.

Political obstacles

Cuba's attempts to gain a foothold in the international pharmaceutical market have come up against formidable obstacles, both commercial and political, with the stringent US trade embargo.
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During the last few years the biggest earner for Cuban biotechnology has been the export of Hepatitis-B vaccine to more than 30 countries. The Cuban vaccine is widely regarded as the more effective than Belgian and US-produced vaccines....

Health tourism

Another growing source of income is health tourism, with a number of specialist hospitals, clinics, health spas and resorts catering to foreign visitors. Last year more than 5000 foreign patients travelled to Cuba for a wide range of treatments including eye-surgery, neurological disorders such as multiple sclerosis and Parkinson's' disease, and orthopaedics.

Most patients are from Latin America. However the unique Cuban treatment for retinitis pigmentosa, often known as night blindness, has attracted many patients from Europe and North America. Health tourism generates revenues of around $40m a year.

Joint ventures

The special obstacles to Cuba breaking into the western market have led to a policy of trying to find joint venture partners, which currently include a Canadian, German and a Spanish company.

Cuba's cutting-edge products for neck and breast cancer have caused the biggest stir in the world of biotechnology. They have just been licensed to a German pharmaceutical company, with rights to develop the drug TheraCIM h-R3 for the European market....

In the long-term, Fidel Castro's big gamble with the heavy state investment in biotechnology may finally pay a dividend not only in health benefits, but also in the top-notch economic rewards that have so far eluded him.

It would also be a very satisfying for Cuban scientists to feel their research and development, which is not driven by the profit motive, had been successful in the world marketplace.

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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.

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The program for popular gardens first began in Havana in January 1991, and has since been promoted in other Cuban cities. In 1995, there were an estimated 26,600 popular garden parcels (parcelas) throughout the 43 urban districts that make up Havana's 15 municipalities.

The popular gardens range in size from a few square meters to three hectares. Larger plots of land are often subdivided into smaller individual gardens. Garden sites are usually vacant or abandoned plots located in the same neighborhood if not next door to the gardeners' household. Land for the gardens is obtained through the local government body (the Poder Popular) at no cost, as long as it is used for cultivation.
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In addition to increased food security, the gardens have also empowered many individuals and communities. They have renewed solidarity and purpose among the communities, sustaining morale during the ongoing economic crisis. The popular gardens have helped to build community pride; they clean up vacant urban spaces that had once been local dumps, replacing these eyesores with greenery. The gardens also serve as a source of leisure, exercise, and relaxation for many gardeners, a refuge where they can work with the land and reconnect with nature.

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"...Urban gardens were established in vacant lots, school playgrounds, patios and back yards. As a result Cuba created the largest program in sustainable agriculture ever undertaken."

Hmmm, well, England also did urban farming conversion during WW2. 'Victory Gardens' they were called. Same problem, blockade; same solution, urban gardening. Stevia was sweet enough to pass for sugar. To make vodka all you need is a potato.

But urban gardens will grow much faster and bigger
when zapped with Vivaldi. Really:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/victorygarden/index.html

Unfortunately it has borrowed little from the original concept except the name. Not that there is anything wrong with aesthetic gardening, but urban/suburban Victory Gardens were more like farming for food, and out of necessity.

And I was amazed by the lush green landscapes in Devon and Cornwall. I could live in Polperro or Penzance, Plymouth, any of those places. Oh aye.

[ 31 July 2006: Message edited by: Fidel ]

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Originally posted by Lawrence Day:
fidel, i'm not going to dump on flower gardens. They have a very postive psychological influence on many people. But if survival comes into issue, then the beautiful tiger lilies will simply be forced to cede ground to more functional potatoes.

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And they must be using and obscene amount of water in sum total. How feasible will flowers be in future periods of fresh water scarcity?.

Otter said:"It was rather depressing to hear that one of the biggest co-ops in cuba is using pesticides again. Can herbicides and artifical fertilizers be that far off if the country ever gets access to them again?"

They said that pesticides are used sparingly when a particular blight or insects warrant it. But for the most part, they are dedicated to organic farming at that particular Cuba verde. The government just isn't subsidizing costs for fertilizers and pesticides in the amounts that they were used to.

They lie.

The proof is in this program, which is being repeated tonight on CBC Newsworld. Don't miss it again, if you didn't see it last Sunday.

In fact, it's on twice tonight: 10 p.m. EDT and 10 p.m. PDT.

ETA: it was actually on three times - I saw it listed again at 4 a.m. Eastern/ 1 a.m. Pacific. Presumably same times next week.

[ 03 August 2006: Message edited by: M. Spector ]

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Fidel Castro has survived many perils and at 78 [now 80], he is rumoured to suffer from a number of afflictions. As his health declines the world wonders: what will become of Cuba's Green Revolution after he is gone? Even now Castro presides over a political system, which although socialist, has an economy where bartering and quasi-entrepreneurial practice seemingly influence many trades and professions, including the "green" sector. There is also ever-increasing pressure from Canada and European nations for the U.S. to come to terms with Cuba's political dissent.

Will Cuba's "Green Revolution" become a blueprint for sustainable agriculture, medicine, and biotechnology, or will it be swept aside by the economic weight of foreign investors? Or will the public clamour for consumer goods from a weary people, fed up with lack of choice, overwhelm contemporary Cuba? Will Cuba's enormous experiment in sustainable development be maintained if the U.S. embargo is lifted and Cuba is exposed to the brutal arena of world trade? Whatever the future of Cuba's accidental revolution, Castro and his country has shown that alternatives do exist. - CBC.ca

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It seems that one of the poorest nations on the planet has been able to create a univerdal health care system free of any type of user fee that puts all other so-called 'developed' nations to shame. As well, Cuba has one of the highest rates of literacy and one of the best educated populatiuons in the world, again, free of any kind of user fees.

A reviewer says:

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“Small, personalized schools staffed by highly trained teachers offering a child-centered education. Long-term relationships between teachers and students. A coherent curriculum organized for conceptual understanding. Strong leadership from principals who focus on instruction and support teacher collaboration. These features of Cuba's educational system sound like the list of reforms that are constantly being urged by educational reformers in the United States. The difference is that in Cuba, these practices have become virtually universal. This powerful book describes the policy system that has created one of the most effective and equitable school systems in the Americas, and provides compelling data from quantitative analyses and vivid observations of schools and classrooms that illustrate how it works. Everyone interested in improving education should read this book.”—-Linda Darling-Hammond, Stanford University

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You can hear an interview with the author from the KQED San Francisco radio web site. Look for the 10 a.m. March 29, 2007 broadcast, or just click here to listen to the MP3. You can save it and play it later on your iPod or computer, by right-clicking on the link and left-clicking on "Save Target As" (Windows) or if you use a Mac, hold Ctrl, click link, and choose "Save As".

[ 30 March 2007: Message edited by: M. Spector ]