Origins of Permaculture in Cuba

by Jordi Sánchez-Cuenca

This post is a continaution of a previous one on permaculture and also of Melissa's last post on urban agriculture in Rosario, Argentina. In the past months I've had the chance to work with permaculture experts from Cuba's Antonio Núñez Jiménez Foundation for Nature and Humanity. This experience has helped understand ecological urbanism as a feasible and necessary option in the face of the unsustainable urbanism that is overwhelmingly dominant in almost every corner of the world. This time I will explain, similarly to Rosario's case, how urban agriculture and permaculture in Cuba became so important as a result of economic crises.

In the early 1990s, Cuba entered into a severe crisis due to the collapse of the Soviet Union and its associated economies in Eastern Europe. These countries supported around 80 percent of Cuba's economy, which was based on intensive single-crop agriculture and was highly dependent on imports of agricultural sub-products, such as fertilizers. Cuba also had to import most of its food from other countries. The Soviet Union had been paying much higher prices for sugar than the price in the capitalist international market. In a very short period Cuba's agricultural system collapsed, posing a serious threat to something that had been taken for granted: food.



In the 1980s, anticipating the unsustainability of an economy that was highly dependent on a few agricultural products, Cuba's government and agriculture-related professionals had been developing alternative technologies and processes for agriculture. Then the crisis arrived and they were relatively prepared, but the crisis was tougher than anyone could expect. The response from the government moved along basic survival strategies from urban communities. Agriculture, in a few years, moved from large export-oriented, chemical dependent monoculture to small-size, urban-based organic food production. Having an orchard at home or in an empty plot in the neighbourhood became the norm. Most of these drastic changes were supported by the government, and soon urban agriculture became national policy. Today, urban agriculture in Cuba produces 70 percent of the country's food needs.

The institutionalization of urban agriculture led to its integration in urban planning and its different systems, notably water, solid and liquid residues and energy, including transport. In many instances this integration had Nature's cycles as their main reference, which is the principle of permaculture: an intelligently designed human settlement can be self sufficient in terms of food, water and energy.

It has been repeatedly said that a crisis should be understood as an opportunity to change to more sensible and intelligent ways to live and develop. However, as Mike Davis expertly points out, the reaction from most governments has been the opposite.

In the case of Ecuador, single-crop farming dominates its economy (together with petrol). Moreover, according to Ecuador's Ministry of Environment, intensive export-oriented agriculture is the main source of the country's CO2 emissions. This is the case of many other countries that have an economy that is highly dependent on few cash-crops and that is in the hands of few landowners. This is, as was the case of Cuba and Argentina, a highly risky situation, not only in terms of jobs and economic stability, but also in terms of food. Hunger, as tough as it sounds, might be closer than it seems for many millions of families. The question is: should we wait until large proportions of the population go hungry and/or are hit hard by unpredictable extreme climate events before we adopt permaculture?

To find out more about urban agriculture, see the first article in DPU News 2009.

Credits: Image of single-crop farming from http://www.veoverde.com. Image of urban agriculture from http://www.cityfarmer.org/cubaRoberto.html.

The Right to Urban Agriculture in Rosario, Argentina

by Melissa García Lamarca



Rosario, located in the province of Santa Fe about 300 kilometres northeast of Buenos Aires, was a city that suffered greatly during Argentina’s 2001 economic crisis, with poverty levels reaching almost 20% by 2003. One of the responses of the city’s Socialist government was the creation of an Urban Agriculture Office, in the Solidarity Economy Department, initiating an extensive programme across the city that enabled people to grow their own food. Slowly the programme expanded and improved, with the Office serving as a meeting place for people to come and ask for a plot of land in their neighbourhood to grow food, receive seeds as well as the infrastructural, technical and social support they needed to set up or join a garden plot.

Facilitated by this bustling Office employing dozens of people, Rosario now contains over 700 community gardens and four large park-sized gardens known as parque huertas, specifically located next to marginalised communities – a new model in Latin America (see images below). There are also five markets in different parts of the city where people sell the vegetables and fruit grown on their terraces or near their homes to their neighbours. A social agroindustrial processing plant was also created to process and can excess produce into jams for people across the city (photo at right), and on a smaller scale people have been making creams, soaps and similar products for sale with on the aromatic and medicinal plants they grow themselves.








Innovative initiatives have been developed to support urban farmers, such as a ‘green bond’ programme that collects funds from private sector organisations for schools in low-income areas to redeem with farmers and a financial support programme for farmers whose crops fail.



Urban farmers provide the only source of organic produce in the region at very affordable prices, and urban agriculture has enabled many to support themselves and their families since the economic crisis hit Argentina in 2001. People in essence have obtained, for now, the right to fresh, organic and accessible food in the city. Ideally we will begin to see this sort of shift towards more sustainable food production in other cities around the world, but the question is who will facilitate it: local government, as in Rosario’s case (also responding to a profound economic crisis, helping people meet their basic needs) or perhaps communities themselves?

Credits: All images from Melissa García Lamarca.

Cities and Permaculture

by Jordi Sánchez-Cuenca

Permaculture is an approach to designing human settlements and agricultural systems that mimic the relationships found in natural ecologies. Permaculture is one of the activities that UN-HABITAT’s Cities and Climate Change Initiative is implementing in Esmeraldas, Ecuador, with support from Cuba’s Antonio Núñez Jiménez Foundation for Nature and Humanity. Through a pilot permaculture project, the programme is promoting resilient communities in the face of highly probable future food and energy crises and the collapse of water and sanitation services due to Climate Change in the city of Esmeraldas. The project tries to mimic Nature and its ecological cycle with the following components: urban agriculture and healthy food, rainwater harvesting, water recycling, solid waste recycling, and dry toilets.



One if the most interesting features of the permaculture project is its pilot character, which aims at generating a new culture through long-term practice and self-built demonstrations. The first activities of this project were on urban agriculture, through which people from a poor neighbourhood learned to produce their own food in an organic manner and using only local seeds (avoiding dependency from large seed companies).

Now that people had their own well developed orchard, some months later, the project is helping those who volunteer to build their own dry toilet, which will be the source of natural fertilizers for their orchards. The first step in this task has been ensuring that people understand and are motivated with the permaculture cycle and the specific benefits of having a dry toilet instead of a flush toilet. One benefit, for instance, is that they will not be dependent on the city’s water services, which are already deficient and highly vulnerable to climate events. The project helps (purchasing material and providing technical assistance) only those who demonstrate enough motivation, and the toilet construction is done by the person with help from her/his neighbours.

Once the toilet is functioning, it will take about a year before seeing results, which is the time it takes for the storage and decomposition of the faeces. Urine, which is collected separately, will be used to balance the chemicals in the production of manure (either vegetal or faecal). Then comes the public event in which the family opens the toilet chamber and collects the manure, demonstrating in front of their neighbours that it is safe and odourless. Then the project offers more help to those motivated by the event.



It is very important that dry toilets are built through such slow process and integrated into the permaculture cycle. In too many cases, NGOs and development agencies build all dry toilets at once because they want to show quick project results. Almost all of those toilets built in this manner become storage spaces or are simply abandoned, because of the lack of motivation and knowledge about its adequate use.



Dry toilets and permaculture can also be integrated into multi-story buildings, with examples in diverse places such as Germany and Ethiopia. Orchards can be placed on rooftops and backyards, and faeces and urine can be collected in centralized devices for decomposition and recycling. You can find interesting articles and presentations of experiences in different countries in the Dry Toilet 2009 Conference organized by Global Dry Toilet Association of Finland.

Credits: Images of organic orchards, seeds barter and dry toilets from Antonio Núñez Jiménez Foundation for Nature and Humanity.