More on Cuba's 'Green Revolution

Discussion in 'The big picture' started by Jez, Aug 11, 2006.

  1. Jez

    Jez Junior Member

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    I thought we had a link thread for this topic, but I can't find it so I've started another one - please merge Murray if it's out there and I'm just blind as a bat tonight. :lol:

     
  2. Jez

    Jez Junior Member

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    Another two part article on the Cuban transformation, urban agriculture etc:

    Urban farming thrives in Cuba - part one (Click to view)

    Urban farming thrives in Cuba - part two (Click to view)


    One point I think the author has messed up...in part one, he states:


    This statement belies and ignores the fact that the Cuban government (most particularly Raul Castro) had many thousands of people working tirelessly on the logistical side of this transformation...from scientists working on organic solutions to state funded subsidies and education programs, this transformation was only made possible through a massive effort on both the part of government and the Cuban people working together...it didn't just happen spontaneously...it look a lot of planning, cooperation and some very dedicated public servants and scientists overseeing the whole process.

    Anyway, small point in the scheme of things, but nevertheless, important to qualify IMO. :)
     
  3. digging

    digging Junior Member

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    Yes I believe thier government deserves a lot more respect, after doing some history reading about what the people of Cuba have lived through, and now the USA, I feel they hate the country because they are so afraid of communism I don't believe it's as bad as they want everyone to think. Every gov't is affected by corruption, but I don't believe a captalist system would have been able to pull Cuba through what happen.

    Digging
     
  4. Honeychrome

    Honeychrome Junior Member

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    I too saw the documentary on Cuba post-USSR collapse and was impressed with what they achieved, but to be fair.... Not long after I saw the doc I had a discussion with a Cuban-American about it. His family fled Cuba when he was quite young, but he returns often. After talking about the land my partner and I had recently bought and about the various permie plans and ideas we had for it we mentioned the doc, etc. He talked about how awful it was and still is there. The point he made, which seems valid, is how would we feel if we spent years working to create our little piece of permaculture sustainability and then the government marched in and said 'this is ours now' and you've got to go live in the cinderblock boxes with everyone else? I had to admit he had a point....

    My suspicion is that Cuba pulling its self together and surviving the crisis had very little to do with the government and everything to do with the people.
     
  5. richard in manoa

    richard in manoa Junior Member

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    Tom, how old is your friend now? Was his family one of the privileged few from the Batista days who fled the country after their oppressive CIA backed regime was overthrown?
    If so, that might sway his opinion a little bit, huh? Similarly, critics of Communist China aren't hard to find in Taiwan! :lol:
    Whenever I meet people from the former Soviet bloc, I ask them how it compares now to the old days, and invariably I am told that in some ways there are more freedoms now, but in more ways life is worse that there is no health care, that education is becoming a privilege rather than a right, etc etc.
    Sure, the Cuban people are survivors and probably would have worked together in any event, but you can't seriously be saying that Batista or Bush would under the same circumstances have sponsored the same community level programs that facilitated the Permaculture that has happened there. Can you?
     
  6. Jim Bob

    Jim Bob Junior Member

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    First-hand accounts I've had from Cubans are that in the early 1990s, they were going hungry, and people started growing their own food, and growing in little alottments - and at first the government opposed it. That's because farming was collectivised - the government would own a piece of land, and employ people to work it. Private farming, though more productive, the government couldn't control it and ensure everyone got an equal share.

    But the people were simply starving on the collectivised system, and the black market sprang up - imprisoning people for growing tomatoes when they were starving, the government was unwilling or unable to go that far. So that which they could not prevent, they graciously "allowed", and the black market became a white market.

    The government then took the collectivised farmworkers and applied them to organic methods.

    As in all countries, the people led, and the government followed, and the government later took credit for it all. It's true that the government and people are now co-operating there in food production, but that's not how it began. It began with the people, and the government followed, and supported what the people had already done.
     
  7. Honeychrome

    Honeychrome Junior Member

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    I do think that what has been accomplished in Cuba is amazing and I doubt very much the transition will go anywhere near as well when it has to happen here (the US, that is) as it did there. The 'elites' will be using the courts and the military to turn people off of what decent arable land is left so they can grab it for themselves. I just wanted to interject a little bit of perspective- the things I've personally read or seen about Cuba and how it went through its 'oil shock' tend to make it all look like one big happy (though hard) community effort and seldom include discontented voices. The Cuban-American I was talking too is only an aquaintance and I don't know his whole history, though he is young enough that it wasn't during the revolution that he and his family fled. More likely it was the Mariel-era when they left, and perhaps his family had been part of the privileged class pre-Castro. But still, in the interest of truth and fairness such dissenting voices ought to be heard, if only to openly argue that they come from privileged interests.
     
  8. Jez

    Jez Junior Member

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    I think you're underestimating the influence of Cuba's government here Tom & JB. While there may indeed be some anecdotal evidence that they intitially resisted change away from the broadacre/petro-fueled model they'd developed under Soviet influence, the fact remains that the worm farms, composting, pest management, produce strains, produce distribution, organisation of labour and land area etc have all come from government management.

    Cuba has put a massive amount of scientific research into the whole movement...all that came from government personnel rearrangement and prioritisation. As did the skilled labour and teaching resources from overseas - like the Australian Permaculture practitioners who went over there and helped out. Raul Castro and those who helped him, fundamentally reorganised Cuban society in a very short period of time to end up with a very successful program. You simply can't do that without a huge amount of governmental input.

    An individual can easily set out to grow low-input, organic produce, but when the vast majority of those people have no education or skills geared towards raising low-input, organic produce (Cuba had been a totally broadscale, high input farming area since the 1950's and earlier in some instances), a lot of work has to be done to redress that problem.

    It was very much a cooperative effort between government and individuals and outside assistance - more than likely one that couldn't and won't be replicated in our societies as quickly and easily.

    Precisely for the reason that an autocratic government has many disadvantages, yet a distinct advantage when it comes to mobilisation of the entire country in order to enact revolutionary changes in huge areas like food production.
     
  9. Honeychrome

    Honeychrome Junior Member

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    Good points Jez, especially the last one. Ironically it was the Cuban population's accustomation to living with a degree of deprivation and hardship that well-positioned them for dealing with yet greater degrees of it as a collective community. As far as authoritarian states go, I do think the Cuban government has done rather well by its people- the population is highly literate, highly educated, culturally vibrant and certainly now quite cutting-edge as far as sustainable ag. No doubt the authoritarian single-party state the American neocons would love to see installed in the US would be far, far less 'benign' than the Cuban state is, and current American incarceration rates give lie to the notion that America is 'free' and Cuba is not.
     
  10. gardenlen

    gardenlen Group for banned users

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    without getting into the politics of it all to me and keeping it simple (kiss), if cuba can do it then we can all do it surely?

    and for us to do it, it will take gov' intervention in the early stages as they control the scientific cess pool that supports our current habitat devouring factroy farmers and lots of the accepted practises of other farmers none of which espouse to any sort of sustainability outside their preffered lifestyle, gov' subsidies and bank accounts.

    len
     
  11. Jim Bob

    Jim Bob Junior Member

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    I think that Cubans were able to do well when their systems failed because their systems never worked that well anyway, so their failure wasn't a complete shock to them. Our systems work reasonably well (in supplying our needs, and compared to many around the world) so with a collapse we'll be in the shit.

    I don't think we'll see that kind of change, to organic polycultures in urban farming, in Australia in the near future. The attitude of both government and people is not to expect or carry out action, but to throw money at things.

    So for example as oil prices go up from war and increased demand and supply drop, you might expect that broadscale farming miles from cities, relying as it does on huge inputs of pterochemicals, and more petroleum used for transport, would become less profitable, and small-scale farming closer to cities would become more profitable by comparison. But what'll probably happen is that government will increase subsidies and reduce taxes to the broadacre farmers out in the middle of nowhere.

    Also, Australians are accustomed to getting a cash handout when they're needy. Now, I certainly support a welfare state - with taxes, we buy civilisation. But I also support the idea of self-reliance. So for example if an unemployed person with no children lives in a home with a yard, they should grow their own vegies. They have the space, they have the time, and doing some gardening will give them something productive to do, and be good for their physical health and self-esteem, it feels good to be productive, and of course they'l save a bit of money, which is good to do on the rather stingy dole. If they produce more than they need of something, they can sell it and make some extra cash, or give it away to neighbours, helping them get to know people - the unemployed are quite often very socially isolated.

    But a long-term-unemployed person doesn't think of this. Food doesn't come from the ground, it comes from the supermarket. They don't think of acquiring things with labour and from the earth, they think of acquiring things with money.

    So if food becomes very expensive, market theory tells us that people will seek cheaper food - for example, by growing their own. But in fact in Australia it's not likely to happen, because people just aren't accustomed to thinking of growing their own food, they're accustomed to thinking of buying it with money.

    In Cuba and other communist countries, people were accustomed to growing their own food, simply because the collectivised agriculture and state-organised food distriubution system was so inefficient - and people didn't get money to buy things. So there sprang up black market trade in all sorts of things people wanted but couldn't get legally or easily. In the long queues for bread and other goods in Moscow, the black marketeers would walk up and down, telling people they could get them what they wanted.

    So lots of people had small gardens already, productive plots which produced most of the country's food. That's why when the USSR collapsed in the early 1990s, and the quick introduction of capitalism leading to mass unemployment, there wasn't a famine in the former Soviet Union - because people were already accustomed to NOT rely on the official channels to get things done.

    In a way, in Australia we're hampered by government and corporate efficiency - not inefficiency, but efficiency. Because they supply us with what we need and want so efficiently, we forget how to do it ourselves, and lose the will to do it. It's like when you get a child of rich parents, who buy the kid everything they need, and someone else does all the housework for them, if the kid is sent out to their own flat, to find their own job, do study on their own - they can't handle university, can't get a job, their flat is a mess, and so on. Because someone else always took care of them, when that care stops for some reason, they're helpless. Children with rougher upbringings do better when they grow up.

    Similarly, with society as a whole. Again, I support the welfare state, and am in favour of real capitalism, real marketplaces. But the bad side to these things working so well in supplying us with our needs is that when they do fail, we're helpless. Cubans were able to do well when their systems failed because their systems never worked that well anyway, so their failure wasn't a complete shock to them. Our systems work reasonably well (in supplying our needs, and compared to many around the world) so with a collapse we'll be in the shit.
     
  12. richard in manoa

    richard in manoa Junior Member

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    Er, you might be suprised how many longterm unemployed people grow most of their own food and use their dole checks et al to put petrol in the ute, or go on spending sprees at the salvation army, etc. I'm not going to name names here, you understand, but some of my best friends are longterm dole bludgers! :D
     
  13. Jim Bob

    Jim Bob Junior Member

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    Mine, too. And almost none of them grow stuff. I'd be honestly surprised if a majority of long-term unemployed grew anything... well, except for this guy I knew in Adelaide with an indoor hydroponics set-up, but he wasn't growing things normally eaten, if you know what I mean.

    He was certainly being productive, though. Most, not so much.

    We're accustomed to thinking of food coming from the supermarket, not from our own backyards. How do you get what you want? Buy it! Produce it? What? How? Don't you need a thousand acres and a factory warehouse and four hundred employees to make things? :(
     
  14. gardenlen

    gardenlen Group for banned users

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    they grow babies around where we live, a guaranteed supply line of those needing further welfare assistance into decades to come.

    too many cash insentives for the young to not want to work, yet we can do limited work and want to do something ie.,. 1.. to supplement our pension to hedge higher costs of living (the true cost of living) & 2.. we wouldn't mind at all if it led to us being independantly financialy secure.

    but there is no help for us from the gov' agencies and no baby bonuses either, wonder if the young ever think that this honey pot could run dry???? like the peak oil thingy when do we reach peak gov' hand out because the tax payers that are working can no longer carry the load of non-tax paying younger people and the rich who pay little in tax against their earning??

    lots of yards around here with welfair recipient tenants not many vege' gardens though, not many vege' garden period. those that aren't welfare recipients are yuppies.

    keep those young bellies fat.

    len
     
  15. Jez

    Jez Junior Member

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    No doubt Tom...I have I strong suspicion that at least in the forseeable future, the 'modern Western industrialism model' V the 'didn't quite ever make it to that stage 2nd and 3rd world model', will be very much a case of 'the bigger (more technically advanced and complicated) they come, the harder they fall.

    In some areas like health, that may well prove to be not the case, but in terms of a functioning society measured on all levels (including a generally satisfied populace), I think it will work out that way.


    I think there is some hope for us Len. I often try to keep up with the CSIRO's newsletters, and though they're not exactly up to Permaculture type thinking yet, they are doing ok. It's a small sampling of overall ag scientists, but they are the leading scientific research organisation in Australia, and there are a few people involved with the CSIRO thinking at least part of the way along the right lines.


    JB, I strongly agree with most of what you say, however, just one small point - unemployment is not what it used to be. These days, from what I know, if you're anything resembling long term unemployed (i.e. 6 months or so), you get thrown full-time into a pointless, unrewarding 'work for the dole' scheme. It would be wonderful to see such a scheme embrace backyard or community garden food production from smallholders...I'm sure there is scope for someone to fill a niche there and make it a big success. I've heard of isolated instances of that happening, but not done properly with a genuinely good training provider.

    Then of course, if it was really successful it may well jeopardise established small business people with established market niches...but having said that, I think the greater good would outweigh the harm...though no doubt not all would see it that way. :D
     
  16. Jim Bob

    Jim Bob Junior Member

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    Oh, it's absolutely true that the "work for the dole" scheme is shit. But remember that its aim is not to provide work or education.

    If the aim were to provide education, they'd send them to uni - a uni place is actually cheaper for the federal government that the dole (about $10k) and the cost of administration of the dole recipient (about $50k each - for every $1 given in benefits, $5 is spent on administration).

    If the aim were to provide work, well if there's 10 hours a week work for 100,000 people which actually needs to be done, they could create 25,000 full-time jobs, couldn't they?

    They aim is to harass them until they get sick of being on the dole and leave it; whether they leave it to go to a job or to indigence is a matter of indifference to the federal government. Aong with the paperwork, constant meetings, etc, the aim is to basically make being on the dole a pain in the arse.

    Which, you know, it basically is anyway, even without all that shit. I've always been puzzled by this idea that people on the dole are all lazy, and we should harass them into working. In the first place, most aren't lazy, they're unlucky, or have low self-esteem, etc. In the second place, lazy people will remain lazy no matter what. If a lazy person is forced to take a paid job, then they'll still be lazy, just paid more to do nothing. I would rather we paid them the dole to do nothing than minimum wage or higher to do nothing, it's cheaper. And why should some lazy bastard take the job that some hardworking person would desperately like to have?

    But you're entirely right that there are better things they could be having them do. Educating them in the small daily ways they can be productive would be very good. Vegie gardens are an excellent way to do it, especially since unemployed people often fall into very bad diets.

    I'd love to see someone at the local Sunday markets with his tomatoes and beans, "When did you start growing this stuff?" "Work for the dole, mate." That'd be awesome :D How would that be for a "green revolution"? Begins with the dole bludgers!
     
  17. gardenlen

    gardenlen Group for banned users

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    exactly bob,

    that is it hey work for the dole is if nothing slave labour that realy does little for the community and i doubt for the worth of the people involved.

    now if that work as you said was permanent work then those people become self reliant, they pay taxes and begin to get some worth that has a better chance of motivating them to better things.

    funny hey when whitlam did this way back when the red scheme i think it was called the unions etc.,. where up in arms.

    low self esteem is a major contributer to lots of social issues.

    and the idea of involving those who want to in food growing even if some of the vacent land councils have under there charge where assigned over to city farm type activities to get these people involved and maye some more senior then there is a chance that some education can be encouraged, especially so if that produce went to aid the needy.

    the way i see it there is no vocational help, so if someone fronts up who wants a change they can offer you nothing at all in paths to follow or courses to do that have a chance of going further, as in our case we ended up high and dry and out of pocket of scarce living funds anyway and the whole thing was a monumental waste of time and resources.

    and taking up time at places like mission impossible sorry Mission Australia is nothing more than an out from having to do work for the dole as it gives no one who goes there anywhere to go, no good feeding some one with low self esteem a self motivation course just a dead end waste of resources.

    len
     
  18. Jez

    Jez Junior Member

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    Yep, couldn't agree more gentlemen.
     

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