Antonio Roiy Santo has a cheeky glint in his eyes and a note of purpose to his stride. One wouldn´t dare suggest to him that at seventy-eight perhaps he should have found someone else to climb up and clean the garden´s water tank. After a lifetime of determined struggle and resistance you know he´d hear none of it. He´s an original revolutionary who advanced with Che Guevara in the Ejercicio Rebelde (Rebel Army) to free Cuba from 'Yankee imperialism'. He introduces his 'younger' compañero (65 years old!) Carlos Alfonso Jimenez. Together with two other retirees they work the quarter hectare vegetable garden 'El Retiro' in Santi Spiritus, Cuba.
El Retiro captures a lot about Cuba´s unique story of food. When the Soviet Block collapsed in 1989 Cuba lost 80% of its foreign trade and supply of fuel almost overnight, and the US strengthened its 'blockade'. Thus began what Fidel declared "The Special Period" of wartime style austerity measures in peacetime. Without the cash, food, oil or fertilizer imports to fully support its population the average daily calorie intake plummeted, reaching a low of 1,863 (74% of the recommended amount) in 1993 [1]. Verging on starvation the people began to raise animals in their houses and grow food wherever they could and with government acting midwife a national urban agriculture movement was born - of necessity. So goes the story. The 'organoponico' is in many ways the face of this movement: urban or peri-urban plots of raised vegetable beds, the name was coined when hydroponic grow beds, their imported nutrient solution no longer affordable, where filled with compost.
In El Rapido´s neat rows grow a wide selection of vegetables, herbs and medicinal plants: lechuga (lettuce); acelga (chard); rábano (raddish); remolacha (beetroot); zanahoria (carrot); espinaca (spinach); nabo (turnip); pepino (cucumber); berro (watercress); apio (cellery); cebollino (spring onion); aji (sweet chilli pepper; culantro (corriander); comino (cumin); perejil (parsley); orégano (oregano); aloe vera. Shade netting covers the younger plants. Biological pest control methods are used, including: application of an anti-parasitic spray made from Neem tree leaves; planting bug repelling, bug predator attracting and 'sacrificial' plants (such as sunflowers) at the end of each row; and using 'trampas de color' (colour traps) of yellow sheets painted in motor grease. Water, "the most difficult thing", is pumped from a well with an electric pump - at first a windmill pump was used, but wasn´t effective in the slight urban winds. It fills the tank, just cleaned, and from there a patched-together pipe system distributes it around the beds.
The site was previously a bus terminal parking lot. It took just seven days to convert it, Antonio proudly explains, because the whole of the surrounding community helped out, placing the old cattle feeding troughs and filling them with gravel and earth. It is part of the urban fabric, donating produce to the local hospital and children´s groups (circulos infantiles), and collecting organic waste from nearby houses to compost. Children, teenagers and university students spend time there learning the basics.
Produce also goes to the four workers, of course, and the rest is sold at the little kiosk on site. I ask whether they make a good living - they may be retired, but it´s hard to survive on the state pension of only around 100 pesos per month ($4 USD). "It´s a good retirement, but we earn more than money" replies Antonio, who clearly loves the work. They earn 800 pesos each per month ($33 USD) after expenses - El Rapido is completely self-financing. That´s a good income in Cuba, where a doctor´s state salary is equivalent to only $40 USD per month. Added to this are the savings they make on groceries - in Cuba food is perhaps the largest single expense for most families.
This tiny ex-parking lot contains many of the lessons from Cuba´s experience. It shows the risks of industrial and import-based food supply and how important low-input urban agriculture becomes if this supply is interrupted. It shows how a strong community can pull together to start growing food locally almost overnight. It shows how crucial gardeners and farmers become when fossil fuels are scarce - with food prices and growers wages to match. It perhaps also shows the limits of government central planning. While state support helped to facilitate and organise a grassroots movement in Cuba, its efforts to control prices have perhaps recently hindered its growth. One expert described a 'trading bottleneck' caused by government legislation in 2008 that forbade the nascent practice whereby urban agriculturists were importing additional produce from the countryside, to offer a wider selection to their customers. Now groups like El Rapido can only sell their produce on site, and only their own produce.
Many Cubans working in agriculture view sustainable, low-input practices as a continuation of the revolution: if the country is to protect its freedom it cannot allow its basic necessities, especially food, to be in the hands of a few external suppliers. Seen in this way Antonio may have switched his Rebel Army rifle for a spade but the uniform still fits.
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[1] Data on Special Period import and calory reductions from the book Agriculture In The City, Cruz and Sanchez.
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