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CubaNews v June 2011
AGRICULTURE
Vegetables: Reason for hope amid a bleak landscape
C
uban agriculture is rampant with examples of consistent failures, unsuccessful policies and wasteful management — but one bright spot over the past 15 years is edible vegetable cultivation. Over this same time span, other crops like citrus, rice, coffee, tobacco and cattle (all analyzed by CubaNews from December 2010 to now) have been devastated to the point where it’s hard to foresee any genuine recovery. After hitting rock-bottom in the early 1990s, the government rushed to introduce reforms to boost food production. By 1993, food intake dropped to 1,863 calories per day nationwide from 2,900 calories a few years earlier, as acknowledged by the Ministry of Public Health (see CubaNews, March 1998), while for a large part of the population it was below 1,500 calories a day. Things got so bad that an outbreak of optic neuropathy, a malnutrition disease affecting nearly 50,000 people, hit Cuba. The weight of newborn babies fell and nourishing mothers also lost weight. It was the worst part of the euphemistically called Special Period.
atively low cost and in small plots close to consumers. Such staples included roots, tubers, plantains, spices and garden vegetables, from cassava to cucumbers, garlic and eggplants. The results came fast. Between 1995 and 2000, per-capita output of veggies tripled from below 88 lb per year to 265 lb. By 2005, it had quadrupled to 352 lb, guaranteeing — at least
lb per year in 1994 to 147 lb in 2009; cassava from 22 lb to 59 lb in 2006. Total vegetable consumption went from 69 lb per year in 1994 to 383 lb in 2003, the highest in decades. For some strange reason, potatoes have traditionally been considered a sensitive product, and the government does not allow it to be sold or produced freely by farmers. State farms and cooperatives grow potatoes LARRY LUXNER
BY ARMANDO H. PORTELA
PER-CAPITA OUTPUT TRIPLES IN 5 YEARS
At that time, over 80% of Cuba’s croplands were leased to new cooperatives. The government created vast schemes including the organization of urban agriculture and trying to get soldiers involved on a massive scale. The tight grip over individual sale of food was eased, and private people could for the first time sell those forbidden avocados from their own backyard. The “Programa Alimentario,” as this effort was dubbed, focused on production of traditional staples that could be grown fast, at rel-
Shoppers inspect potatoes at a peso-only outdoor produce market in the Vedado neighborhood of Havana.
in numbers — nearly one pound of veggies per day per person. Roots, tubers and plantains, all key staples in the Cuban diet, soared in production over that time, as did production of cassava, plantains and tomatoes. The average per-capita production of plantains, for instance, jumped from as low as 18 lb in 1989 to 149 lb in 2008; tomatoes from 17
within tight rules, mainly in the red soils of Havana and Matanzas provinces. Output is unstable, however. After averaging 48 lb per capita annually from 1980 to 1994, potato production rose to 65 lb from 1996 to 2005, only to drop to 43 lb in the 2006-09 period, with a fall to 27 lb in 2007, the lowest per-capita potato production since 1974. See Vegetables, page 11