Organic in Cuba: Something from Nothing | Civil Eats

Organic in Cuba: Something from Nothing

There’s a scene in Terry Gilliam’s 1991 movie “The Fisher King” in which a man plucks the discarded wire cage from a champagne bottle off a pile of garbage bags as he walks down a New York City street with a woman he is trying to impress.  He fiddles with the wire in his hands as they walk, eventually holding up what looks like a delicate and beautiful little metal chair, fit for a dollhouse. “You can find some pretty amazing things in the trash,” he says to her.  She is smitten.

That transformation of a piece of trash into a thing of beauty transfixed me then, and still does.  When I traveled to Cuba a few weeks ago, on a food sovereignty study trip with Food First, I had the opportunity to be transfixed again and again.

Some of the things I saw there included: the discarded front grill to an old electric fan used as a hanging planter with just three chains and some burlap lining; liquid humus packaged in old Havana rum bottles and sold at a farm supply and consultation site; soda cans at an educational farm center cut to be planters for small succulents; an old cooking oil tin at a community garden turned sideways, sliced open, and planted with herbs; raised beds created with upturned spent liquor bottles; and a chicken coop on a family tobacco farm cobbled together from scrap wood and metal.

Everywhere we turned we saw materials whose natural life was being maximized, extended. I joked to my fellow travelers to watch their water bottles–if it ain’t nailed down, it might become a planter. An image flashed through my mind: the corner deli in New York City (my hometown) where with a sandwich order one is given a stack of 30 napkins and a set of plastic cutlery she’ll never use. What would a resident of Havana think?

This Cuban thrift is sometimes taken to an extreme, reminding me this practice is not done because it’s beautiful or quaint, but because it’s a necessity. Examples include: Styrofoam seedling planter trays are reused and reused, brown with age and crumbling at the edges; a farm carved out of a former trash dump; and earth that was a rainbow of glass and plastic shards, unidentifiable debris, the old shell of a bus—and who knows what else–nestled next to the pig barn.

After the fall of the Eastern Bloc, Cuba was left to figure out how to survive without the influx of food, fuel and other supplies that they had purchased affordably from the Soviet Union until then. The answer turned out to include the practice of a more local and organic agricultural system (fewer inputs, less fuel, more oxen), as well as an overall practice of thrift. In doing this so successfully they made survival possible. As an engineer at the Institute for Research in Tropical Agriculture (INIFAT) told us: “the best thing that could have happened to Cuba was to be forced to use sustainable and organic methods of agriculture.”

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As part of this transformation, the government now runs programs that support small farmers and encourage local—and often urban—production. When we met with the PR representative from the Ministry of Agriculture, we had lots of questions about how their theory played out in practice. One person in our group asked “do you encourage people to practice seed saving?”  He responded with a chuckle: “the main concept we teach here in Cuba is saving. I’m not just talking about seeds, I am talking about everything.”

Farmers in general—whether they be in Cuba, the U.S. or elsewhere—are experienced practitioners in reducing and re-using. Financial necessity and deep understanding of the natural environment means that small-scale sustainable farmers must be magicians of a sort, from seed saving to all manner of cost saving and resource saving practices. They, like the character in “The Fisher King,” know how to make something beautiful (and delicious) out of almost nothing.

After all, isn’t the transformation of soil, seed and water into something that feeds and nourishes us—nothing into something—the ultimate expression of this?

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Jerusha Klemperer lives in New York City where she is a co-founder and the communications director at FoodCorps. She blogs for Huffington Post, WellandGoodNYC and her personal blog Eat Here 2. She also cooks up food and fun with Conni’s Avant Garde Restaurant. Read more >

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  1. John Morin
    Make no mistake, imports from the Soviet Union didn't make Cuba any better off. Sustainability is a way of life in Cuba and it started long before Castro. To include a quote contending sustainability is the best thing that happened to Cuba is a slap in the face to Cubans past and present.
  2. p5nyc
    An excellent piece of overall journalism, from lede to quote to close.
  3. Lydia Nobello
    Jerusha,

    Great article!

    Lydia
  4. Bill McCann
    Thank you Jerusha, for the great article. It just about always works out that "less is more". A great mechanic can still function just fine with tools from the bargain rack, as a great cook will be able to make a wonderful meal in a less than splendid kitchen without a lot of fancy ingredients or gadgets. We can all learn so much from people who have to make do with what they have on hand. I think that we are actually made made poor by the excess that we live with here in the US.
  5. PE
    There is no 'waste'-- when will you learn? And yes, you are impoverished by not seeing that, nor realizing that hi-tech agriculture is horribly inefficient, like your cars.
    Ancient Greeks thought themselves wise by saying a great culture could have a small garbage heap. Cultures with large middens cannot be great.
  6. Pedro Gross
    I am left perplexed with the thought that people who write these type of articles think that the way to make everything beautiful and nice is to be ruled by a iron fist-fascist-military government. There's nothing to admire about the poverty and decay in Cuba brought about the capriciousness of one person to stay in power all his life at any cost. People should feel sorry for Cubans for not being able to enjoy the freedoms or affording the luxuries, comfort and living standard that are taken for granted by many Americans. Move to Cuba and survive on 20 dollars a month. See if you like the innovative ways you need to come up with to feed yourself.
  7. Patrick
    For anyone who;s interested, there's a group planning trips to La Habana to study urban agriculture. Here's a link. http://neemtree.org/what-we-do/nc-delegation-in-cuba/
  8. Michelle
    While I think Cubans have done amazing things, I have to agree with Pedro. What the Cubans have done has nothing to do with "thrift" and everything to do with poverty and necessity.

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