Cuba: The Food Crisis is Systemic and Structural

June 4, Climate and Capitalism

Address by José Ramón Machado Ventura, vice president of Cuba’s Councils of State and Ministers, to the high-level conference on World Food Security: The Challenges of Climate Change and Bioenergy

(English translation by Climate and Capitalism, from Juventud Rebelde, June 4, 2008)

Mr. Chairman:

Two years ago, in this very hall, the international community agreed to eradicate world hunger. It adopted a goal of halving the number of malnourished people by 2015. Today that modest and inadequate goal seems like a pipe-dream.

The world food crisis is not a circumstantial phenomenon. Its recent appearance in such serious form, in a world that produces enough food for all its inhabitants, clearly reveals that the crisis is systemic and structural.

Hunger and malnourishment are the result of an international economic order that maintains and deepens poverty, inequality and injustice.

It is undeniable that the countries of the North bear responsibility for the hunger and malnourishment of 854 million people. They imposed trade liberalization and financial rules that demanded structural adjustment, on a world composed of clearly unequal actors. They brought ruin to many small producers in the South and turned self-sufficient and even exporting nations into net importers of food products.

The governments of developed countries refuse to eliminate their outrageous agricultural subsidies while imposing their rules of international trade on the rest of the world. Their voracious transnational corporations set prices, monopolize technologies, impose unfair certification processes on trade, and manipulate distribution channels, sources of financing, trade and supplies for the production of food worldwide. They also control transportation, scientific research, gene banks and the production of fertilizers and pesticides.

The worst of it all is that, if things continue as they are, the crisis will become even more serious. The production and consumption patterns of developed countries are accelerating global climate change, threatening humanity’s very existence. These patterns must be changed. The irrational attempt to perpetuate these disastrous forms of consumerism is behind the sinister strategy of transforming grains and cereals into fuels.

The Non-Aligned Countries Summit in Havana called for the establishment of a peaceful and prosperous world and a just and equitable international order. This is the only way to an end to the food crisis.

The right to food is an inalienable human right. Since 1997, this has been confirmed on Cuba’s initiative by successive resolutions adopted by the former Commission on Human Rights and later by the Council and the UN General Assembly. Our country, representing the Non-Aligned Movement, and with the support of more than two thirds of UN member states, also proposed the calling of a seventh special session of the Human Rights Council, which has just called for concrete actions to address the world food crisis.

Hunger and malnourishment cannot be eradicated through palliatives, nor with symbolic donations which — let us be honest — will not satisfy peoples’ needs and will not be sustainable.

At the very least, agricultural production in South countries must first be rebuilt and developed. The developed countries have more than enough resources to do this. What’s required is the political will of their governments.

• If NATO’s military budget were reduced by a mere 10% a year, nearly 100 billion dollars would be freed up.
• If the foreign debt of developing countries, a debt they have paid several times over, were cancelled, the countries of the South would have at their disposal the 345 billion dollars now used for annual debt service payments.
• If the developed countries honoured their commitment to devote 0.7 % of the Gross Domestic Product to Official Development Aid, the countries of the South would have at least an additional 130 billion dollars a year.
• If only one fourth of the money squandered each year on commercial advertising were devoted to food production, nearly 250 billion dollars could be dedicated to fighting hunger and malnutrition.
• If the money devoted to agricultural subsidies in the North were directed to agricultural development in the South, our countries would have around a billion dollars a day to invest in food production.

Mr. Chairman:

I bring this message from Cuba, a country ferociously blockaded but standing proudly by its principles and the unity of its people: yes, we can successfully confront this food crisis, but only if we go to the root of the problem, address its real causes and reject demagogy, hypocrisy and false promises.

Allow me to conclude by recalling the words of Fidel Castro, when he addressed the UN General Assembly in New York in October 1979:

“The din of weapons, of threatening language, and of arrogance on the international scene must cease. Abandon the illusion that the problems of the world can be solved by nuclear weapons. Bombs may kill the hungry, the sick and the uneducated, but bombs cannot kill hunger, disease and illiteracy.”

Thank you very much.

Cuba: Urban Farmers 'Make Soil From Scratch'

Monday, June 02, IPS

The soil in Cienaga de Zapata is salty, shallow, stony and hard to plow, but this Cuban municipality is nevertheless home to more than 140 urban farmers.

"Here you have to make soil from scratch, and to begin with I had to bring it from Jagey Grande," said Nibaldo Ortega, who joined the urban agriculture movement five years ago. He plants his vegetables in beds, and between these he puts sawdust, "to carry on making soil," he said.

His crops are few in number. "I grow tomatoes, beans and radishes, mainly. Now I'm planting fruit trees," he said. But his real vocation is rearing pigs, rabbits, chickens and other farmyard animals as part of an urban agriculture livestock program.

The 43-year-old Ortega began by "raising a few little pigs" with a friend, on a small plot some distance away from the neighborhood of El Caletcn in Cienaga de Zapata. With a population 10,000, it is the largest and most sparsely populated municipality in the country, located in Matanzas province, east of Havana. The municipality is also the location of the largest and best preserved wetland in the Caribbean.

The farm now has more than 100 pigs, 292 laying hens, 30 rabbits and several Muscovy ducks, as well as other animals. "I'm the son of a small farmer, and I like this work," he said, while massaging a sow's belly to help her give birth.

As his initial land area became too small, Ortega was given the right to use (but not own) another plot of about half a hectare, opposite his own. He is getting it ready and has made a map of where he will put each sector. At the back he has reserved space for the "infirmary," for the benefit of the veterinarian who looks after his animals.

"Some inspectors came and said, 'Don't worry about how much you'll make. As long as you're producing food, there's no problem.' Before, it used to be viewed differently -- they were afraid of people earning too much personally. But now there's a different attitude to what you earn from your work. And there are certainly no days off here," he said.

Ortega signed a contract with the state for raising pigs, under which he was given 10 breeding sows. He must sell the pork he produces to the state buyer, who pays for part of it at the official price and the rest at market price, which is four times higher.

"I think it's a fair agreement, and it's good business for me, because as part of the contract they sell me imported fodder for the pigs practically at cost. Besides, it's legally earned money," he said. In his view, producers are more motivated now.

Luis Lazo, a People's Power delegate for the barrio of El Caletcn, said that previously people always had to go to other places to find pork and vegetables, "but now they can buy them nearby."

"Part of what is produced by urban agriculture provides food for social programs, such as for low-income elderly people," he said.

Alicia Abella, who is in charge of urban agriculture in Cienaga de Zapata, told the local media that there are now 146 producers in this municipality, some of whom grow vegetables, fruit and grains, while others raise livestock and poultry.

The urban agriculture movement, which now involves some 300,000 producers all over the country, on state farms, cooperatives or private farms, is based on environmentally sustainable farming methods.

According to official figures, more than 15 million metric tons of chemical-free foods -- basically vegetables, fresh herbs, fruit and rice -- have been produced in urban and peri-urban areas in the last decade.

As for the livestock programs, available reports indicate that small-scale breeders in peri-urban areas produce 12,000 metric tons of pork a year, as well as 76,000 metric tons of mutton and goat meat, and 3,400 metric tons of rabbit meat.

Experts point out that another interesting aspect, from the agro-ecological point of view, is that the agricultural and livestock programs are interdependent, so that livestock programs, in addition to producing food, supply more than 70 percent of the organic fertilizer used on the crops that are grown.

An annual 8.5 million metric tons of organic fertilizer are produced, of which 1.4 million metric tons are made of earthworm humus. These maintain the fertility of soils devoted to urban agriculture and also supply the needs of organoponic and intensive vegetable farmers. Official reports say roughly 5,000 polluted sites, generated by unauthorized rubbish dumps and abandoned lots, have been eliminated by transforming them into organoponic and intensive vegetable gardens over the past decade, in more than 200 cities and towns.

Spurred by soaring international food prices, the Cuban government decided last year to restructure its agricultural sector in order to boost productivity and reduce food imports, which this year will cost $1.9 billion.

The restructuring will include granting the use of uncultivated land to small farmers who wish to farm it and the decentralization of agricultural planning, which will focus on the local characteristics of each part of the country. The authorities have declared the food crisis to be a matter of national security.

The Worst is Yet to Come

Alexander Cockburn, June 1, Counterpunch

Between Grant’s Pass, a pleasant retirement town in southern Oregon’s Siskiyou mountains, and the Californian fishing port of Crescent City, chiefly noted for the nightmarish state prison known as Pelican Bay, stretches route 199. It runs alongside the spectacularly beautiful Smith River ravine for some 50 miles. To drive it, particularly on long holiday weekends, can be a teeth-grinding, bumper-to-bumper affair. This last Memorial Day weekend, on a late Sunday afternoon, I shot through in record time, meeting as little traffic as I normally would at 2 am.
For the first time since the national trauma known as the great gas shortage of 1973 Americans are experiencing a collective shock as they adjust to gasoline prices that are now three times higher than they were four years ago.

Last weekend, on the edge of what used to be a summer’s worth of driving sprees, many of the families who would normally have been chugging along 199, looked at the $4 a gallon basic price of gasoline in the Pacific north west and stayed home or crept round the corner to the local mall. Hence my pleasantly rapid drive home from Olympia, Washington to Petrolia, California, the first place oil wells were sunk in California, in the 1860s, though the industry lasted only a couple of years. The drive comprised a distance of 630 miles, achieved in my 1962 Plymouth station wagon, which gets 15 mpg on the open road, better than the SUVs most Americans can no longer afford. The round trip cost me $336.

Of course Europeans, paying roughly twice as much to fill their tanks, snigger unfeelingly at American moaning at these prices. But comparisons are not the issue here. The median family income in Crescent City (pop. 4,000 excluding 3,300 prisoners) is about $20,000 a year. A third of the population lives below the poverty line. As in thousands of American towns across the country there’s no slack in the family budgets here to accommodate a fuel bill here that’s suddenly shot up 300 per cent.

A family of four that decides, as many will this summer, that it can’t afford to drive 1,200 miles down Interstate 5 from Seattle to Disneyland is making a decision that spells slim business for motels, roadside restaurants and the tourist industry overall. Americans routinely drive huge distances, starting with the long distance truckers. It now costs well over $1,000 to fill the tanks of an 18-wheeler with diesel fuel averaging around $4.20 a gallon. Over 1,000 trucking firms have already gone bankrupt this year and the independent drivers – about a fifth of the industry overall – face imminent ruin.

Roman emperors knew well that political tranquility marched arm in arm with the cost of bread. As energy costs have soared in his term, Bush’s popularity ratings have plummeted. Doug Henwood, editor of Left Business Observer calculated a couple of years ago that an "uncanny" 78 per cent of the shifts in Bush's ratings mirrored changes in gas prices. But the political implications are far larger and more long-term than the dismal trendlines of the 43rd president.

Across the past generation American incomes, below the very rich, have remained essentially static, or have actually gotten worse. Year after year Americans work harder, longer, for less money in real terms. Political tranquility has been maintained by cheap gasoline, cheap food and, in recent years, the seemingly easy credit and tax deduction on home mortgage interest allowing middle-income families the illusion they owned a home. Gasoline is no longer cheap. The cost of food is going up. The subprime crisis has pitchforked thousands of Americans into forfeiture.

There’s worse to come. Since the subprime meltdown there’s been a lull. But now the so-called “Alt-A” loans, made to supposedly more credit-worthy borrowers and amounting to a trillion dollars, are allegedly about to go down the tubes, carrying banks and insurers with them. And this time Ben Bernanke, chairman the Federal Reserve, has no bail-out strategies left. He can’t lower interest rates to banks below the current 2 per cent, a level partially responsible for oil costing almost $130 a barrel. Round the corner looms hyper-inflation.

The sky is dark with chickens coming home to roost. America is in a terrible fix. But you wouldn’t know it from the politicians. Obams, Clinton and McCain flourish quick-fix recipes that are as inconsequential as a pop gun aimed at a gunship by an Iraqi child. Whoever is in charge come January 2009 will have to set as drastic a change in course as did Roosevelt in 1933, the last time the political economy faced this serious a crisis. Not that we need another Roosevelt, trying to bail out capitalism and stave off the left.

We need an an active radical mass movement, shoving Congress into action. There’s no sign that any of the candidates have advisors at their elbows capable of offering pertinent counsel. Thirty years of vacuous boosterism about the virtues of neo-liberalism and unfettered markets have exacted a fearsome toll on the intellectual capacity of the policy-making elites.