Food Production Is Key to Cuba's Future

And Vital to Its National Security

   Christina Polzot {left} is one of the most important people on the island of Cuba. In July of 2012 she left her position at Care International in Ottawa, Canada for Cuba. Her assignment: Put Cuba on the path towards attaining food security. It was, she knew, a daunting task. But she is making enormous strides in the right direction. Yet, Cuba still spends $1.6 billion a year importing about 60% of the food it consumes. Christina longs for the day when the plush island of just over 11 million people can begin exporting vegetables and fruit along with other profitable products such as nickel and tobacco. But Christina found an island where much of the soil had been neglected for decades without proper nutrients such as fertilizer. She also quickly realized that the Cuban people, well educated otherwise and buffeted by guarantees of food, health care and shelter, were sorely lacking in knowledge when it came to farming. With Cuba realizing it can't depend on the rhythms of foreign support forever, Christina has been afforded a strong hand in re-vitalizing the island's food production, which she believes starts with educating the farmers and providing them financial incentives to both learn and to produce. By all accounts, her efforts are slowly producing tangible and very positive results although she says, "After four months on the job, just as I was starting to feel like I was getting a grasp of it all, Hurricane Sandy struck the eastern end of the island, leaving behind extensive devastation. But thankfully, we have had the support of Care International, the European Union, Canada, France, and Japan." 

  As Care International's representative in Cuba, Christina Polzot is doing an outstanding job helping the island to become self-sustaining when it comes to food production. She says, "Building management capacity at the local level is vital and we are accomplishing that. The government and the people want this to happen, so it will." The collapse of the Soviet Union entering the 1990s coupled with the U. S. embargo virtually deprived Cuba of necessary equipment, pesticides and fertilizer. The Cuban government still controls 70% of the island's land -- 6.7 million hectares {1 hectare = 2.47 acres}. In 2007 40% of that land was idle. Since 2010 Cubans have been encouraged to farm in rural and even urban areas and sell produce directly to customers without having to deal with cumbersome state bureaucracy. 

   
   More and more Americans are helping Cuban farmers to become more efficient at producing food. A contingent of 18 members of the Illinois Farm Bureau spent valuable days on the island working directly with diligent Cubans on farming techniques. The Cuban government is leasing hectares of land on easy terms and, in some cases, giving the land to farmers who meet certain quotas. 

 Some outdoor Farmers Markets in Cuba now stay open 24 hours a day.

This Jim Kane/Culture Xplorers photo captures a girl skipping rope in Trinidad, Cuba.

      This AP photo shows Robert Taber of CBS News interviewing Fidel Castro on May 17, 1957 in the Sierra Maestra Mountains of eastern Cuba. A few months earlier -- back in December-1956 -- Fidel was one of 17 rebel survivors out of the 82 who had left Mexico on the old, leaky yacht Granma to rendezvous with Celia Sanchez's guerrilla unit that was intent on ousting the Batista dictatorship. But the yacht began sinking about fifteen miles from where Celia waited and a Batista reconnaissance plane had spotted the yacht and set up an ambush, which devastated the rebels, some of whom were swimming ashore without their rifles as they were being targeted by machine guns. This interview with Taber was widely shown on American television on multiple news programs and on a CBS special entitled "Rebels of the Sierra Maestra." Taber afforded Americans their first look at Fidel Castro. His venture high up into the Sierra Maestra was orchestrated by rebel leader Celia Sanchez. Batista had told Cubans and Americans that Fidel Castro had been killed along with 65 others when the Granma was ambushed. In addition to her other duties as a rebel leader and guerrilla fighter, Celia Sanchez was also the primary rebel recruiter of weapons, fighters, and supplies. She realized that Cubans and Americans who supported her revolution were, as Batista intended, holding off on their crucial support because they believed Fidel, the face of the revolution, was dead. So Celia arranged for Robert Taber of CBS News as well as Herbert L. Matthews of the New York Times to trek high up into the Sierra to interview Fidel, proving he was alive! The two great female guerrilla fighters -- Celia Sanchez and Haydee Santamaria -- personally met Taber and Mathews at a rail-head and then escorted them to the guerrilla hide-out. And, as chroniclers like to say, the rest is history.

    
   This is Herbert L. Matthews of the New York Times with his favorite revolutionary fighter, Fidel Castro. During the Revolutionary War and later in Revolutionary Cuba, Celia Sanchez took full advantage of Mr. Matthews' insatiable and unending admiration of Fidel.

     
      
      In other words, Celia Sanchez used her wits, guts, and do-or-die resolve to overthrow the powerful Batista dictatorship that was supported by the United States, the strongest nation in the world, and the Mafia, the strongest criminal organization in the world. Using Taber and Matthews to inform Cubans and Americans that Fidel Castro was still alive was merely one of her stratagems. 

******************************