Digging & Dreaming

Day 7 - Tuesday 15th November - INIFAT, Santiago de las Vegas

Today was my first slightly melancholy day since I arrived in Cuba. It started off badly as the tiredness of the day before meant I had fallen asleep on my bed the night before and not woken up until about 3am, fully clothed, on top of my bed. I was more than tempted to stay where I was until morning but instead I dragged myself up to get undressed and put myself to bed properly.

The next problem was that when I got up properly in the morning I knew at once that I didn’t have my Spanish head on. Things just felt fuzzy on that front, which was frustrating, as I had done so well with the language the day before.

After breakfast the first session of the day was with Marisol who had been so kind to me in my first couple of days at INIFAT. The theme of her seminar was the agro-ecological management of soil. This was a particular challenge as there was a great deal of terminology that was well outside my existing scope of knowledge of the Spanish language, as well as being outside the scope of my little dictionary!

Experimental Organopónico beds at INIFAT

Marisol explained that for agriculture to have a foundation in ecology it needed to be founded on a basis of animal health, human health and environmental protection. Soil came into this as a key principle component of an ecosystem alongside climate and fauna / vegetation. So what do we mean when we talk about soil?

• A structure with its own system.
• Biological, living and dynamic.
• Complete and open.
• Structured.
• Multi-faceted.
• Multi-functional.
• That has fertility.

Soil has  harmonic equilibrium that exists in its physical state, and the produces environment that permits the development of a plant ecosystem. On this basis all sustainability needs a fundamental basis within the fertility of soil with soil managed in a variety of different ways from the application of organic fertilisers to crop rotation.

Making compost - Cuban style

After lunch was a practical workshop with Daniel Balmaseda developing some of Marisol’s ideas further and looking at the production of organic fertilisers and substrates. We learnt about compost and its production, which is very different to the systems that we use in the UK due to a much higher air temperature. Interestingly we also learnt about the vermiculture techniques that have been an absolute backbone in the development of Urban Agriculture in Cuba. This technique combines composting action alongside the action of worms and microorganisms to transform organic residues, derived from farming of all types, into two different products of high quality and low cost:

• Humus
• Proteins.

For this reason you will find an area for worm composting on every urban growing site that you visit in Cuba. And the rules of where they are situated are that they need clean water, to be close to source material, to be well drained, shaded and in an area that isn’t likely to be flooded or to be overwhelmed by heavy rain.

Making worm compost at INIFAT

So that is what I managed to get through, though the language was pretty intense! By teatime I felt worn out meaning that after dinner when most of the group headed into Havana with Daniel as their guide I decided to give it a miss. On one hand because I didn’t relish the prospect of a 1.5 hour bus journey, but also because the day had made me tired and I wanted to recharge my batteries so I could get as much out of the next day as possible.  On that Tuesday I slept very, very well in my cosy little room in Santiago de las Vegas!

Day 5 - Sunday 13th November - Havana

As Sunday was my first full day off with nothing horticultural planned at all I took a trip into Havana with Marisol and her son Roberto. We left INIFAT about half nine and picked up one of the many taxis that runs between Santiago and Havana – a journey of about 20km. These taxis are totally different to what we’re used to here in the UK. Firstly, most of them are glorious classic cars that inventive and ingenious Cubans have kept on the road. Secondly they operate almost like mini buses with strangers sharing the journey and jumping in and out along the route when the get close to where they need to go. The cost of the journey to Havana was 20NP per person working out about 50p. If you made the same journey on the very crowed, hot, slow bus it would only cost you 1NP (2.5p!) showing why this kind of taxi journey is still a luxury for the average Cuban who earns around 1360NP per month. It is certainly the busy busy buses that most Santiago commuters are using to get to work.

The Capitolio

The drive into Havana took about half an hour and when we arrived we were dropped right in the centre outside the Capitolio Nacional that is at the heart of the city. It was built as a result of money earned from sugar by Cuba’s US-backed dictator Gerardo Machado between 1926 and 1930 and still remains one of the grandest buildings in the city. It cost around US$17 million to build and was made in similar style to the American Capitol Building in Washington DC. Originally the home of the Cuban Congress, it became the home of the Cuban Academy of Sciences and the National Library of Science and Technology in 1959, and still reamins their home today. From there we walked down into Havana Vieja which is the beautifully, if a little clinically, restored historical heart of the city.

This part of the city is one the best-preserved Spanish colonial centres in the Caribbean and Americas and is jam packed with over 900 buildings of historical importance in an astonishing variety of different architectural styles. Full of cobbled streets, shaded alleyways, 16^th Century buildings and leafy courtyards, the whole area was left virtually untouched from the 1960s to the 1990s. This meant that although it fell into serious disrepair and decay it also retained its historical integrity intact. We began our exploration of the area by heading down Calle Obispo that is one of the main ways of getting through the neighbourhood, and that was already packed with lots and lots of tourists by the time we got there. From there we headed to the Camera Obscura on the corner of Plaza Vieja that is one of the oldest and most beautiful squares in Havana. This was Marisol’s idea and it was a very good one because the camera and its tower gave amazing views and an excellent introduction to the geography of this part of the city.

View of the city from the Camera Obscura

After this we carried on walking, passing through the gorgeous Plaza de Armas where we sat a bit to admire the architecture, before carrying on through Havana Vieja to Centro Havana. This is a part of the city that many visitors ignore but it certainly gives a more realistic, less sterile view of what life is like for Cubans who live in Havana. It’s a much more residential neighbourhood than Havana Vieja and much less beautiful in many ways, but it’s got amazing energy and is the place you’re more likely to see children playing in the streets and people out on their doorstep chatting to their neighbours. Here we found a basic NP cafeteria to eat lunch. And where Roberto discovered much to his amusement that in me he had met his first vegetarian – a great rarity in Cuba so it seems! It was whilst we were eating this meal that the enquiries and questions started- something I was learning quickly was that as soon as Cubans feel relaxed with you and comfortable they also feel happy to start asking questions. Today it was Roberto’s turn…

“What is the average salary in the UK?... How do taxes work?... How much tax do you pay?... How much does a house cost?”

The questions are never rude or pushy, normally just genuinely curious. And sometimes with a melancholy undertone that life would have so many more possibilities if they lived somewhere else. As Roberto interrogated me I was happy to answer his questions because I have nothing to hide and no embarrassment about my country, but also because I felt it was important to reinforce my own belief that every country and every way of life had positive and negative aspects that have to be taken into consideration. Nothing is ever as simple as black and white. For example, of course it is true that Cubans earn a very low wage compared to people in the UK, but they do also have access to some of the best health care in the world. Cubans also have fluctuating access to basic things like electricity, and access to many consumer goods is limited and expensive, but their education system is top class with an adult literacy rate on the island of 100% - impressive by anyone’s standards. Of course, Cuba is the only place that Roberto has any experience of so it is hard for him to make an informed decision about whether the way of life there is the one that he wants to live. And this lack of information seemed to make this bright young man who wanted his own independence feel that he was being hindered making the decisions about his own life that he wanted to make.

Glimpse into Centro Havana

So that’s another part of the Cuban dilemma, a highly educated knowledgeable population who are hungry to know more but who aren’t able to due to lack of access to information. Almost the polar opposite to many situations in the UK where people have the knowledge of the world at their fingertips, a great privilege, but they decide to turn their back upon it. And the reason for doing this seems to be almost as though their capacity to act and react has been almost entirely deadened by the world that they live in.

As José had said the day before;

“Cuba – a country of contradictions.”

And here was another one for me to try and get my head around. Only a couple of days in and I could already see that my trip to Cuba was going to give me a lot of food for thought, and this was before my learning proper had even started at the Ministry. I couldn’t even imagine what that may hold when I started properly the following day.

PS For those of you who tune into this blog to learn more about organic growing and who have been bored to death learning about Cuba instead I promise that the next installment of the Cuban adventure will really start to get to the bottom of how they grow food in their cities. I promise it'll be worth the wait!

Day 1 - Wednesday 9th November - INIFAT – Santiago de las Vegas

So there I was. I made it. Thousands of miles across the planet to this beautiful island called Cuba. I could hardly believe that I was finally there after all those months of planning and organizing and preparing. Finally I’m there in a homely little hotel at INIFAT in Santiago de Las Vegas and I felt… well… tired. It had been a long, long day to say the least!

I started off early that morning at a slightly weird hotel outside London, eating fruit and croissants and drinking tea and wondering what the day was going to hold. Of course I had some ideas and expectations but I was still nervous about what the day was actually going to hold in reality. Then it was time to leave the hotel and go on to the Gatwick Airport. And there I was in the crazy horrible place that airports are just wanting to get on the plane and go and not wanting to wait for the adventure to start anymore. Next it was onto the plane where all we seemed to do was eat and drink and watch films and where everyone who asked what I was doing and why I was going to Cuba on my own said “ooo, aren’t you brave” when they learnt about what I was going to be doing in the coming weeks. And that was it for the next nine hours. Nine hours! That’s a long time on a plane but it was all worth it to see beautiful green and red (rich, ruddy red) Cuba appear below us surrounded by the dark, blue sea.

And that was it. That was the place that I had been waiting for and that I would be free to explore, as soon as I was reunited with my visa at the airport. An experience that took twenty seemingly never ending minutes as the long queues from my flight melted away and I was left as the only person waiting in a big, empty, immigration hall. It was such a relief to finally have my visa in my hands and be able to pass through the doors into arrivals, pick up my bag and head through the doors into the foyer of the airport to meet Maritza and Raul from INIFAT who had kindly come to meet me. Now is probably a suitable time to explain what INIFAT is.

INIFAT stands for Instituto de Investigaciones Fundamentales en Agricultura Tropical “Alejandro de Humboldt” and it was founded in 1974, as a development of the Centre for Experimental Agronomy that had existed on the site since 1904. It is now an organization that is known nationally and internationally for the support that it has given to the development of Urban and Sub-urban Agriculture in Cuba. Its main aim, as part of the Cuban Ministry of Agriculture, is to support the strengthening and development of sustainable agriculture with a specific focus on Urban and Sub-urban contexts. Since October 2009 INIFAT had also become home to the National School of Urban and Sub-Urban Agriculture and this was who would be hosting me for my first two weeks in Cuba.

INIFAT is based in Santiago de las Vegas which is sleepy little town about 30 km outside Havana, and 3km from the airport. This short journey was made in a little, black Lada with leatherette seats and Playboy stickers on the back windows, where I got to speak my first Cuban Spanish as I ate the peanuts that Maritza had brought along for me, and caught my first glimpses of Cuba in the dusky light of the evening. It only took about ten minutes to get to INIFAT and to the little hotel they have on site and where I would be staying during my time there.

After having my first (huge!) meal at the hotel I was happy to settle down in my comfortable little room and get some sleep in anticipation of my first full day in Cuba. When I would be able to get a proper feeling for INIFAT and Santiago de las Vegas in the warm and sunny light of day.

Cuban Countdown

It's only a matter of days now before I head out to Cuba on my horticultural adventure and I feel overwhelmed by absolute fear and absolute excitement in almost equal measure. Although I have done loads and loads of research it's almost as though I have no real perception of what will greet me when I arrive. Of what the country will actually be like. My experiences so far seem to suggest that Cubans are extremely hospitable and helpful people but beyond that I don't know what expectiations I should realistically have of what the island will actually be like when I finally step off the plane next Wednesday. One thing that I am secure about though is my motivation for visiting in the first place - to get a feel for how their organic agriculture system actually looks on the ground, with particular focus on urban agriculture.

The break-up of the USSR in the early 90s signalled the beginning of a time in Cuban history that is referred to as the ‘special period’.  Prior to this Cuban agriculture was highly industrialised and had relied heavily on Soviet oil for farm machinery, fertilisers and pesticides. When the Soviet Union broke up Cuba lost more than 50 percent of its oil imports, much of its food and 85 percent of its trade economy. Transportation systems ground to a halt and people went hungry.

The Cuban response to the crisis included a series of major shifts in the way food was produced. Estimates suggest 50% of Havana’s 2.2 million population is now supplied by urban agriculture, a growing industry in which 140,000 people are currently employed. Lack of access to fertilisers and pesticides has also meant 80% of Cuba’s production is now organic with use of pesticides slashed from 21,000 tonnes per year in the 1980s to the 1000 tonnes it now uses. Use of oxen has also increased in place of petrol fuelled farm vehicles and large state run farms have given way to smaller co-operatives, with 10,000 acres leased rent free by the state.

Even now Cuban food production continues to increase and since Raul Castro took over as president from his brother Fidel in 2008 the state has increased what it pays for crops; decentralised agricultural decision making and distribution; and leased 50% of vacant state lands to 100,000 individuals and private and state co-operative farms. Investment continues in agricultural alternatives to fossil fuelled farming with estimates being made that the production of bio-pesticides saves the Cuban economy $15 million annually.

Amazing stuff huh? I can't wait to see how this will all look in reality and get a feel for how this organic farming revolution that I have heard so much about actually functions on a day to day basis.

 

Urban Farming in Detroit

Amazing film from The Guardian on urban agriculture. Inspirational stuff!