CUBA: URBAN FARMERS ‘MAKE SOIL FROM SCRATCH’
http://www.tradingmarkets.com/.site/news/Stock%20News/1650321/

The most recent figures I can find show the UK as having 1,837,000 hectares producing 14,288,000 tonnes
Giving a yield 7.78 Mt/ha compared to the world average of 2.75 Mt/ha.

Obviously, this involves heavy use of nitrate fertiliser, pesticides and selective breeding of crops which are resistant to rainfall and mould.
China, India and the US, the world’s biggest producers of wheat, have greater problems with drought.

The need for UK imports arises from the quality of soft wheat produced in the UK climate. Normally about 7-10% of hard-wheat is imported from Canada, Australia or the US for bread production.

According to a reply in Hansard UK Imports of wheat were as follows:-

Thousand tonnes
2002 1368
2003 985
2004 784
2005 1175
2006 1162
Note: 2006 data are provisional

http://www.parliament.the-stationery-office.co.uk/pa/cm200607/cmhansrd/cm070517/text/70517w0014.htm

Cuba doesn’t really produce wheat as a major crop, but is a maize and rice producer. The most recent figures I can find for Cuban production show the following:-

Maize
132,247 hectares 360,000 Mt 2.72 Mt/ha (World average yield 3.41Mt/ha)

Rice
204,600 hectares 715,800 Mt 3.50 Mt/ha (World average yield 3.37 Mt/ha)

http://nue.okstate.edu/Crop_Information/World_Wheat_Production.htm

Which indicates that Cuba’s productivity levels compare favourably to Mexico’s in Maize, but are slightly poorer in Rice. China has better productivity in both crops.

So my point stands - permaculture and city gardens can be a solution for getting vegetable crops to urban dwellers without heavy petrol use and maybe produce some meat protein too. But in terms of feeding people in the most heavily populated countries, the case that nitrogen based fertilisers and mechanised agriculture can be totally dispensed with, remains unproven.

You really should know about Cuba before you blame everything on the Embargo.

I read somewhere that you can get more crop yield using organic growing techniques (compared to standard agrobusiness methods) but that the plots need to be smaller and its more labour intensive.

I don’t think the use of oxen in Cuba is something socialists/ environmentalists should universally seek to get back to- I’m sure that you could make an eco-friendly solar or electric tractor which does not compress the soil as much as the traditional tractor.

Whether or not petro-based fertilisers are required to feed the current population is another important consideration.

Marx observed the initial stages of the ‘metabolic rift’ whereby as england moved from feudalism to capitalism there was a tendency for food to be cultivated where it always had been but the new mode saw it being bought to the cities at a much greater rate. When people were living off the land their compost and faecal waste would ostensibly be re-ploughed into their immediate plot of land.

With the advent of capitalism though, nutrient was ‘robbed’ from the country and taken to the city, and then ‘pumped into the Thames, at great expense’.

I think herein lies the solution. If it is possible to grow large amounts of crops without synthetic fertilisers there would need to be a program which harnesses urban compost and greenwaste- possibly in a network of worm farms- and returns rich soil to the farms.

Sewage could also be partially treated (and methane harvested in the process) and then used to irrigate crops. This is not uncommon in China. If you believe there are health issues with using sewage to grow food crops, then certainly you must agree it could be used to grow things like cotton, hemp, plantation timber etc.

Hemp and timber by products could then be composted in the worm farms producing soil for food crops.

I don’t think this sort of stuff would be easy- there would need to be a massive public works program to establish these networks of waste harvesting and recycling. But I think fundamentally it would be possible to eliminate the use of most fossil fuel based fertilisers without causing a massive drop in food production.

And at the end of the day, using soil as a substrate for chemicals (i.e. the standard agrobusiness mode of agriculture) destroys the soil’s natural richness. Part of the reason the Cuban transition is so impressive is that they addressed this problem and successfully rehabilitated highly depleted soils.

Oh and who said Cuba is perfect? Not me. But for some odd reason they have really well resourced scientific organisations who had been working on the shift to organics for years in the leadup to the collapse of the USSR.

Cuba is not the only country subject to a crushing blockade but unlike North Korea, Palestine or pre-invasion Iraq they manage to get everyone fed and in a highly ecologically sustainable manner. Thats pretty damn impressive I reckon. Which is to say nothing of their international doctors, their healthcare and education system, marine and forestry reserves, judicial system… And women and young people are well represented in the Cuban parliament, with a fair turnover of candidates in the last several elections…

It aint perfect- but there are some pretty impressive aspects to the Cuban model.

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=42539

It would seem they’re trying to provoke violent confrontation -typical behavior of CIA destabilisation campaigns. Notice how the international news media have largely ignored this events. What are the odds that when Movement for Socialism supporters respond in kind it will be held up as an unprovoked act violence incited by Morales’ “divisive policy”.

I don’t think any socialist thinks it’s perfect. How could it be? It is a pretty impressive place however, compared to most other third world countries, considering that it’s been under a harsh economic blockade for decades.

Don’t get me wrong, I love Cuba but it is not the perfect society you think it is.

What is interesting about the Cuban example, is that normally these ideas of permaculture are tried out in a lifestyle way, on a small scale. There has been some attempt in Cuba to re-orientate the entire economy/society on a mass scale.