Cuba Food Sovereignty Tour - July 17-31, 2010

Posted April 12th, 2010

**This tour is open to anyone seeking to learn about the Cuban food system and promote solidarity with Cuban agriculturalists.

Urban Vegetable Garden in Havana, Cuba. This is a clip from a BBC series on organic agriculture.

Cuba's unique history has shaped its food system in a way unlike other countries in today's modern world. Exclusion from global trade has forced Cuba to pursue alternatives to conventional industrial agriculture. As a result it has emerged as an example of sustainable agriculture based heavily on local production. By breaking from the global food system, Cubans have made great strides toward reclaiming control of their food interests. On this tour you will meet the Cuban farmers, activists, policymakers, and local consumers who are fighting for food sovereignty,.

Let us take you straight to the roots of Cuba's food system. Learn about its uniqueness in the global economy and meet the people on the ground fighting for food sovereignty.

Global Exchange and Food First co-organized the first U.S. delegation
to Cuba focused on sustainable agriculture in 1992, then co-authored
the seminal book on the subject, The Greening of the Revolution: Cuba's experiment with organic agriculture edited by Peter Rosset and Medea Benjamin, followed by the 1996 Food First documentary, The Greening of Cuba by Jaime Kibben.

Global Exchange organizes regular delegations of professors and
practitioners of organic agriculture to Cuba, who have developed
exchange programs through their universities and communities. These
relationships are now proliferating, with scientists and farmers
expanding their own joint projects between the U.S. and Cuba. It is
only the U.S. embargo that interferes with the full development of
these joint projects.

Background:
For many people Cuba is a dream destination, so interesting and different from home, yet complicated to get to as a solo US traveler. Indeed this Caribbean island is small in physical size but vast in global significance, cultural wealth and beauty.

Faced with the US embargo and the collapse of the Soviet Bloc and all trading relations it had with Cuba, the 1990s left the country without access to agricultural inputs like fertilizers and pesticides. As a result a forced large-scale experiment in organic agriculture has established a thriving system of sustainable agriculture and Cuba’s food system is a model of agricultural alternatives.

After the fall of the Soviet Union, Cuba saw pesticide imports drop by 60 percent, fertilizer by 77 percent and imports of foodstuffs fell by more than half. An entire nation’s fully modern and industrialized agricultural system came to a screeching halt. The country embarked on one of the most drastic shifts to sustainable farming methods and self-sufficiency that the world has ever seen.

Since the early 1990's, Cuba has been engaged in the most comprehensive conversion from chemical to organic agriculture that any nation has yet attempted.

Cuba’s unique history has shaped its food system in a way unlike other countries in today’s modern world. Exclusion from global trade has forced Cuba to pursue alternatives to conventional industrial agriculture. As a result it has emerged as a progressive example of sustainable agriculture based heavily on local production. By breaking from the global food system, Cubans have made great strides towards reclaiming control of their food interests. On this tour you will meet the Cuban farmers, activists, policymakers, and local consumers who are fighting for food sovereignty.

The Cuban Agriculture Ministry called the new program of Low Input Sustainable Agriculture the “Alternative Model,” set in contrast to the “Conventional Model” – or the modern industrial agricultural paradigm. Food First has a long history of working with important Farmers’ Organizations for over 20 years and generating important analysis of Cuba’s alternative food system. Global Exchange and Food First co-organized the first U.S. delegation to Cuba focused on sustainable agriculture in 1992, then co-authored the seminal book on the subject, The Greening of Cuba and collaborated on an award winning video of the same title.
----------

Resources
"The Greening of Cuba, by Caroline Whyte, An Caorthann (The Rowan Tree) Irish green-alternative magazine
http://www.iol.ie/~mazzoldi/toolsforchange/zine/sam98/cuba.html
The Greening of the Revolution: Cuba's experiment with organic agriculture Edited by Peter Rosset and Medea Benjamin, Ocean Press, 1994, 1999.
The Greening of Cuba, by Peter Rosset, NACLA Report on the Americas, 1994
http://www.interconnection.org/resources/cuba.htm