19 Marzo 2010

On march 19th in the morning we drove to the Ministry of Agriculture. Agriculture, like all other large scale ‘projects’- or systems in Cuba, was nationalized after the triumph of the revolution in 1959. This implies a couple of things.
1. There are no large land owners or US companies with massive plots like the United Fruit Co. etc. One can only imagine the rage of these companies when they were kicked out of the country
2. The crops that farmers grow, and the cattle they raise, all of their agricultural products belong to the state.
There are exceptions. Much of the land was redistributed by breaking it in to much smaller plots and giving it to already farming individuals or campesinos, but some was distributed to a collection of farmers for cooperatives- and the cooperatives have ownership that is more similar to private ownership. After our meeting at the Ministry we drove to see one such cooperative (and because of the general idea of cooperatives and my time in Guatemala, I fell in love in and didn’t want to leave- but that is a different story).
I’ve written before about the rumor (joke??) that it is worse to kill a cow than another human here. Again, I’m not sure that is true. I can’t imagine working my whole life to raise cattle and then giving them to the government for national distribution, when it is likely as a farmer with a low salary I can’t afford to buy meat- that meat goes instead to the slightly sunburned tourist from Portland, ME. Agriculture is another aspect of life here that is difficult to wrap one’s mind around.
The only other thing I’ll say- as this entry is entirely too long already- is that a lot of the agriculture here is done in a very green way. This is out of necessity, not by choice. As we walked through the coop. the director said, “careful, watch out…that’s from our tractor”. He was referring to oxen droppings. The produce and profit from urban gardens goes directly to the gardener, and they must be organic if they are in the city.
Another difficulty is that all Cubans have equal access to education. This is the only country I can think of- and Fidel Castro has said something similar- where there is a problem because of the fact that everyone is highly educated. In short, there is a shortage of job applicants in the farmland.