Cuba

Food & Society

Karen Neunzig and Wendimere Reilly

Introduction

• Island in the Caribbean (93 miles from the U.S.)

• Tropical climate• abundant rainfall and fertile soil

• Population: 11,274,826

• 105th largest country in the world

• Primary export: Sugarcane

• Primary import: Fuel

Key Historical Features

• 1959- Cuban Revolution

• Castro overthrows Batista

• Cuba begins Agrarian Reforms

• U.S. begins gradual trade restrictions (sugar/oil)

• 1961-62: Bay of Pigs/Cuban Missile Crisis

• Cuba/Soviet trade relations strengthen (sugar/oil)

• 1989-91 Fall of the Soviet Bloc

• Cuba loses main source of imports/exports

• The “Special Period in Time of Peace” begins

Special Period in

Peacetime

• Prior to 1989 agriculture was produced on a large scale utilizing conventionalmethods

• Pesticides and fertilizers

• Fuel dependent farm equipment

• Labor force of unskilled farm workers

• Sugarcane was the primary commodity crop

• Over 80% of government owned farmland devoted to sugar production

• 75% of the total value of Cuban exports (Rosset, 1994)

Special Period in

Peacetime

• What happens when food systems

collapse?

• 70% reduction in available fertilizer

and pesticides

• 50% reduction in fuel for agriculture

(Rosset, 1994)

Low Input Farming

• Born out of necessity not consumer interest

• Research becomes a national priority

• Chemicals replaced with biopesticides

• microbes, integrated pest management

• crop rotation, disease resistant plants

• Fertilizers became scarce leading to the

introduction of biofertilizers

• composts, earthworms, and animal manures

Low Input Farming

• Farm equipment that

required fuel, tires, and other

parts were replaced with

animal traction

• Vacant lots in cities were

turned into urban gardening

projects

• A new system of farming,

“Agroecological Technology”

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Popular Rice Program

• Staple food of the Cuban diet

• Small scale rice production was one of the first agriculture changes during the Special Period

• The Ministry of Agriculture made this a national priority

• The Rice Institute began offering technical support to small growers in order to enhance yields

• Families were encouraged to start small rice plots to ensure adequate supplies for their families and the surplus was sold at farmer’s markets

System of Rice Intensification

• The “system of rice intensification” method (SRI)

embraced by government

• Originated in Madagascar

Method SRI Rice Conventional Rice

Seedlings 2 leaf-stage (8-10 days) 4 weeks

Spacing Single, 25cm apart Clumps

Soil Moist, aerated Flooded

Weeding/Additives Manual rotary weeder Pesticides/Fertilizers

Benefits Requires little training, inputs,

uses less water and seed

Less labor intensive

Table 1- Comparison of SRI and Conventional Rice Production

Rice

• Supporters of this method claim that it increases

yields with minimal inputs

Table 2- SRI yields compared with average yields in Cuba, by Province, 2003

Province No. of

trials

Av yield & range,

usual methods,

(t/ha)

SRI methods

(t/ha)

Increase (%)

Pinar del Rio 6 4.3 (2.7-6.6) 7.6 (4.7-12.0) 77

Provincia La Habana 4 4.9 (3.5-6.5) 8.1 (7.0-8.8) 65

Villa Clara 5 3.0 (1.7-6.1) 7.0 (5.0-12.2) 133

Sancti Spiritu 3 6.5 (4.5-7.6) 9.9 (6.5-11.8) 52

Camaguey 1 2.8 8.5 203

Holguin 5 5.9 (3.4-7.2) 8.7 (5.5-13.0) 47

Granma 2 2.6 (2.4-2.8) 5.4 (4.6-6.2) 108

Santiago de Cuba 2 2.6 (1.6-3.6) 3.6 (3.0-4.2) 39

Average 28 4.3 7.3 71

Intensification Farming

• Critics in the scientific community claim that there is a lack of rigorously controlled experiments and that the methods are difficult to duplicate in the lab

• This method is being studied in-depth by the Cornell International Institute for Food, Agriculture and Development

• Over 50 countries worldwide are experimenting with this system

• Cuba is testing the system on sugarcane with positive preliminary results

(Glover, 2001)

Social/Political/Economic

Implications

• Agroecological farming successful for small family farms but presented unique challenges for large scale, state owned farms

• State farm workers did not have the same skills as farmers and scaling up agroecological technologies did not fit nicely with systems designed for conventional agriculture

• In 1993, the Cuban government began turning many of these large scale farms into Basic Units of Cooperative Production (UBPC’s)

• The government maintained ownership and leased (for free) small units to worker owned co-ops

• Co-ops were given quotas, additional yields were sold at local markets and the workers kept the profits

Social/Political/Economic

Implications• Things to consider:

• Just because people can survive using Agroecological

farming it is still labor intensive

• Would Publix, McDonalds, or Home Depot be a welcome

addition?

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Reportin

g Year

U.S. Dollar Value Of

TSRA-Authorized

Exports To Cuba

Ranking Based

On Export

Markets

2012 US $457,318,357.00 43rd (of 229)

2011 US $358,457,389.00 50th (of 232)

2010 US $366,467,782.00 45th (of 228)

2009 US $528,482,955.00 36th (of 232)

2008 US $710,086,323.00 29th (of 228)

2007 US $437,564,824.00 37th (of 230)

2006 US $340,433,442.00 34th (of 227)

2005 US $350,218,040.00 30th (of 228)

2004 US $391,990,382.00 25th (of 228)

2003 US $256,901,471.00 35th (of 219)

2002 US $138,634,784.00 50th (of 226)

2001

US $4,318,906.00

(December- 1st sales

under TSRA)

144th (of 226)

Total

TSRA

Sales

US$4,340,874,655.00

Table 3- US Exports to Cuba (primarily agriculture and medical supplies)

Nutritional Implications

Since the Special Period started in 1989…

• Food

• In 1989, calories consumed went from an

average of 3,000 calories a day to 2,000 (Kost,

1998)

• Although starvation was avoided, persistent

hunger suddenly became a daily experience

• Malnutrition in children was evident after just a

few weeks of these food shortages

Nutritional Implications

• Medication

• Many important medicines became virtually

unattainable

• The costs of medical products have increased

because the country had few potential

suppliers

• The resultant lack of food and medicine to

Cuba contributed to the worst epidemic of

neurological disease this century (Kirkpatrick, 1996)

Nutritional Implications

• Several public health catastrophes occurred

• An epidemic of blindness that was partially

attributed to a dramatic decrease in access to

nutrients

• An outbreak of the Guillaln-Barre syndrome

caused by lack of chlorination chemicals

• An epidemic of lye ingestion in toddlers due to

severe shortages of soap

(Barry, 2000)

Cuba Today

• In May 2012, Cuba announced that USD 450

million would be invested in rice production

support (Popular Rice Program) through 2016 (FAO,

2012)

• Purchase machinery and equipment

• Boost seed production

• Improve storage and processing capacity

• Research still being conducted to determine the

Popular Rice Programs success rates

Cuba Today

• Companion planting is being explored and is growing in popularity

• The practice of growing plants close together to benefit the development of one or both of the plants

• Integrative pest management and crop rotation are still being utilized due to the continued lack of access to fertilizers and pesticides

• 80% of Cuba’s production is now organic

• In the 1980s Cuba used 21,000 tons of pesticides, and now only uses 1,000 tons

(Penn State University, 2012)

Cuba Today

• Meat production

• Drastically decreased during the Special Period due to meat and dairy products being extremely fuel dependent in production

• A notable shift in Cuban food habits occurred that resulted in diets higher in fiber, consisting of more fresh produce, and ultimately more vegan in character

• Today, consumption of animal products is less than half its previous level due to lost livestock production

(Copeland, 2011)

Cuba Today

• Nutrition

• Gradually improving

• In 2001 6% of all babies were born with

low birth weight (UNICEF, 2013)

• From 2008-2012 5.2% of all babies were

born with low birth weight (UNICEF, 2013)

• Life expectancy increased from 75 years

in 1994 to 79 years in 2011(The World Bank, 2014)

Cuba Today

• Nutrition

• Per capita caloric consumption has gradually

recovered from the 1990s but the Cuban diet

has changed forever• Decrease of consumption of animal products

• More fruit and vegetable based diets

• During 1997-2002, there were declines in

deaths attributed to diabetes (51%),

coronary heart disease (35%) and stroke

(20%) (Franco, 2007)

Relationship between Food

and Society

• Food shapes a society, so when a populations food sources are suddenly cut off there are many ramifications

• Food affects a societies social, political, economical and nutritional statuses

• As a result of limited resources, Cuba adopted many traditional farming techniques as well as inventing new ones

• During the transitional period from conventional farming, they did exhibit significant nutritional decline, which is now improving and is even better than it was before the transition

• Major shift in Cuban cuisine

In Conclusion

• Cuba has endured many hardships throughout

time and has responded to severe scarcity by

taking it upon themselves to assure survival

• Cuba has been viewed as an example of how to

respond to a sudden and severe shortage of

resources

• The progress they have made in agriculture since

the collapse of the Soviet Union has proven to the

world that sustainable agriculture in not

unattainable

References

• Kirkpatrick, AF. (1996) Role of the USA in shortage of food and medicine in Cuba. The Lancet. 348 1489-91 http://www.cubasolidarity.net/Kirkpatrick-lancet.pdf

• Glover, D (2011) The System of Rice Intensification: Time for an empirical turn. Wageningen Journal of Life Sciences 57:3 217-224

• Rice Research Institute. Review of results and progress with the system of rice intensification during 2003. http://sri.ciifad.cornell.edu/countries/cuba/index.html

• Barry, M. (2000) Effect of the U.S. Embargo and Economic Decline on Health in Cuba. Annals of Internal Medicine. 132:2 http://annals.org/article.aspx?articleid=713236

• Penn State Community Garden. 2012. Intercropping, Companion Planting, and Intensive Gardening [Internet]. Penn State University; [cited 2012 June 10]. Available from: https://sites.google.com/a/psu.edu/community-garden/intercropping-and-companion-planting

References

• UNICEF. 2014. Cuba Statistics. [Internet]. Available from: http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/cuba_statistics.html#122

• Copeland, C, Jolly, C, Thompson, H. 2011. The History and Potential of Trade between Cuba and the US. [Internet]. Journal of Economics and Business. Available from:http://www.auburn.edu/~thomph1/cubahistory.pdf

• The World Bank. 2014. Cuba. [Internet]. Available from:http://data.worldbank.org/country/cuba

• FAO. 2012. Food Outlook: Global Market Analysis. [Internet]. Available from: http://www.fao.org/docrep/016/al993e/al993e00.pdf

• Franco, M, et al. 2007. Impact of energy intake, physical activity, and population-wide weight loss on cardiovascular disease and diabetes mortality in Cuba, 1980-2005. [Internet]. Available from:http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17881386