We walked directly from breakfast to the fields. The matutino (morning meeting) is no longer a cooperative feature, discarded as a “waste of time”.
Several scores of hectares with rows half-a-kilometre long, each with about 1,500 potato plants and tens of thousands of choking weeds. This is not a pleasant sight. No one looks forward to work today and the coming days it will take to hack and pull up weeds.

Mild-mannered Alex, the production chief, and Juan, potato crew leader, led us into the first rows. They showed me how to hoe the weeds without getting too close to the plants. The problem is that to avoid cutting potatoes one must stoop over most plants to pull out the weeds growing amidst the plants themselves.

I experienced that to do a thorough job of weeding requires much more time and painful stooping than the majority were prepared to offer. Most hack the weeds without getting down to the roots, and the amount of stooping to pick out weeds that can not be hoed is not commensurate with the amount of weeds.

Hacking, stooping, hacking and stooping. My head ticked with figures. How many rows, potatoes, weeds, how many man/woman hours? I came up with some three million potato plants. And they should cultivate twice in the season. So there must be two campaigns with most of the members participating.

Alex realised that the work is so tedious and takes so many days that he does not conduct quality control.

Juan showed me their use of biological control against pests. The ladybug eats the bigger bad guys, cinche. Juan said that most farmers are using as many ecological methods of farming as possible. State instructions and propaganda have greatly risen the national consciousness about the worth of organic versus chemical.

"The only problem,” Alex says, “is if the good bugs get overwhelmed by the bad ones and can’t reverse their growth. If a plague sets in then we must use chemical pesticides. The problem with that is once they are used it takes a long time for the poison to disappear so that we can go back to biological control. In the five years I’ve been here we’ve used chemicals just two or three times. We can’t be completely ecological. Our priority is to put enough food on everybody’s table and, hopefully, without having to use precious valuta to import it.”

Farming Structures

All farmers are required to grow and sell basic products to the state, in order to assure everyone rationed goods at subsidised prices, the libreta, and at less subsidised prices on the state farm markets, set up in 1994 to compete with and undersell the supply-demand farmer markets.

At first, private farmers supplied most of the goods but at prices few could afford. Soon state cooperative farmers began selling products at cost+ prices after meeting libreta commitments. The army, which produces much of its own food, joined in the competition with its EJT soldier-farmers.
Private farmers are still entitled to own up to 65 hectares of land but there are only a few thousand unaffiliated farmers remaining. In the 1960s, most independents and cooperatives created the National Association of Small Farmers (ANAP) to represent them before the state. In the 1990s, ANAP set up a new organisation for mutual financial benefit, CCS (Credit and Service Cooperatives).

ANAP farmers now produce 60% of the nation’s root and green vegetables and grains, 60% of its pork, and is the major producer of tobacco, livestock, fruits and coffee. It is especially CCS farmers who earn the greatest valuta profits from Cuba’s renowned cigars and coffee.

The state collectives had produced practically all the sugar and rice. Sugar is now produced mainly by the UBPCs (90%), which is also a major producer of green and root vegetables and fruits.

Most rice is produced by yet another form of farming: the Urban Truck Farms. The UTFs are tilled by family units and some full-time city farmers, who utilise organic intensive growing methods. They grow the best green vegetables, herbs and condiments.

UBPCs now till about half the nation’s soil, double what they had in 1995. ANAP’s 300,000 members till approximately 35% of the cultivated land (25% of total agricultural lands); the EJT about 8%; some old granjas still exist and till about 8% of the land. These farm workers now have better wages and some profit-sharing. They cultivate some vegetables but mainly citrus fruits. The remainder of produce comes from the UTFs, which includes self-consumption and market sales.

There are over one million farmers of all kinds. This is 21% of Cuba’s 4.6 million workers (service=64%, industry=14%). No farm worker any longer lives only on wages. Profit-sharing has taken over and has satisfied a basic demand.

These changes have also improved the state budget. Subsidisation of agriculture has decreased significantly—from 54% in the 1990s to 20% today.

Dr. Santiago Rodríguez Castellón, agricultural economist at Havana University’s Cuban Economic Studies Centre (CEEC), provided facts and figures and described changes.

"The reduction of subsidisation is one of our greatest achievements. Another is the 50% increase of all vegetables in the last three years. We now produce 60% of our food, up 220% from a decade ago. We are not long from when the Special Period will be concluded.”

There is yet a ways to go, Dr. Rodríguez admits. “It had been predicted that UBPCs would take over all granja lands and that all would be profitable. While they have doubled production, only half are profitable; others must rely on state subsidies and credits.

"Not nearly as many housing units have been built as promised. Many leave UBPCs because they must live in cramped collective compounds. The longer established private cooperatives are more attractive. The few granjas left are still too dependent on the state and lack many resources. Moreover, poor work habits inherited from before the Special Period have not been eradicated.”

The economist lamented that the UBPCs “have not matured to the point where workers elect their own leadership, in most cases. The objective of autonomy is still extant, but it is difficult to define and separate where the state stops and the cooperative autonomy process starts. The old centralism, however, has been broken.”

It was the state’s top leadership, which took the initiative to combat, what many call, “revolutionary paternalism”.

Director Matías

Matías’ house looks like Edgardo-Guillermina’s. The key difference is that he has DVD and other modern entertainment technology, which attracts neighbours. They come to borrow salt or sugar; some stay to watch TV and drink coffee, which his young wife gladly serves.

Matías is not preoccupied with critical questions posed.

"Membership turn-over is not a problem. There are always more seeking work than leave. Those who leave don’t want to work hard. Too many Cubans are spoiled and lack consciousness. And we do have a stable group of 78 workers—mainly those who have housing.”

What about the papaya crop?

"The original planting was faulty, a lack of consciousness again. Sure, I have enough money to buy the necessary plants but I didn’t want to tell the assembly this. They must concentrate on potatoes now.”

Lying for convenience is not viewed culturally as a “sin” or wrong, especially if the intention is well meant.

Does his leadership style turn people away?

"Look who’s in my house? Everyday it is like this, a dozen or more people pass in and out. Some may not like it when I’m precise. But they can’t deny the facts: we have had a profit each year I’ve been here; most weeds get removed; we’ve made several million peso investments in the best paying crops: avocados, papayas, mangoes, guayaba, and the wine grapes, which is a long-term investment.”

Matías may only receive a fixed monthly salary of 500 pesos but some workers point out that he gets shares based upon their production, has the only house in the compound with a freezer, and has several rice cookers plus the entertainment apparatuses, which many enjoy.

[Printed in Morning Star as "Feeding a nation", May 10]

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