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CUBA: Small Rice Paddies Produce Big Results
By Patricia Grogg*
HAVANA, Mar 17, 2004 (Tierramérica) - Cuba aims to keep driving up rice production by encouraging cultivation in small paddies through a programme involving 190,000 farmers across the island.
More than 130,000 hectares are already planted with rice as a result of the initiative, and is expected to increase with the incorporation of fallow farmland and the sugarcane fields that have been abandoned since the restructuring of the socialist-run country's sugar industry in 2002.
Another 30,000 hectares of rice belong to public entities that benefit from strong infrastructure but are lacking in the organisation necessary to improve yields and reduce costs.
Rice is a staple of the Cuban dinner table. This country of 11.2 million people consumes 670,000 tonnes of rice a year, but almost 60 percent has to be imported, mostly from Vietnam, China and the United States.
According to FAO (United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation), rice output in Cuba has grown more than 10 percent annually in the past five years.
Experts say such expansion is "unprecedented" in Cuban agriculture, which has suffered frequent blows in terms of climate, lack of inputs and well-intended policies that are never implemented.
"This mode of rice production (in small parcels) and its coexistence with the state model is an example of the realistic and pragmatic approach that is opening a strategic direction for Cuban agriculture," an expert in the area told Tierramérica, requesting anonymity.
Encouraging production in small rice paddies is key for sustainability, say agricultural specialists. This is supported by the fact that nearly 80 percent of the rice consumed in the world today is grown in this way.
Their advantage over giant state-run agro-industrial complexes is that they require less labour and fewer inputs per hectare, and it is easier to control pests and plant diseases.
The Cuban rice programme, launched in 1996 and known as the People's Rice Growing Movement, has also achieved greater productivity and efficiency, say the experts.
The current strategy focuses on increasing the area planted with rice and the number of farmers involved, achieving two harvests per year and greater yields per hectare, according to Agriculture Ministry officials.
These objectives are based on new techniques that have cut rice production costs by more than 30 percent per ton in just three years, according to government statistics.
Planting varieties with higher yields - as well as with greater resistance to pests, soil salinity and climate fluctuations - is cited as one of leading factors in the production boom.
Furthermore, the government incorporated its plans into the System for the Intensive Cultivation of Rice (SICA), an approach used internationally to ensure high yields and to conserve water and seeds.
With SICA, the island's output last year was 220,000 tonnes of rice, a total that is expected to see a 10-percent increase (to 242,000 tonnes) this year, and to reach nearly 300,000 tonnes in 2005.
Prior to 1990, rice production in Cuba was in the hands of four giant complexes whose operations were only possible as a result of high energy consumption for irrigation and machinery, and intensive use of chemical herbicides and fertilisers.
With the dismantling of the island's chief supplier, the Soviet-led socialist bloc, and in the wake of the crisis of the late 1980s and early 1990s, Cuban rice production suffered a serious setback, as did the rest of the island's economy.
But agricultural experts say the main adverse factor today is the instability of the Caribbean climate, which sees long periods of drought alternating with intense rains.
The United Nations declared 2004 "International Year of Rice" with sights on promoting development of this food, which is basic to the daily diet of half the world's more than six billion inhabitants.
(* Patricia Grogg is an IPS correspondent. Originally published Mar. 13 by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network. Tierramérica is a specialised news service produced by IPS with the backing of the United Nations Development Programme and the United Nations Environment Programme.)
(END)
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