When Gabriela Blanco tells other Cubans that she works in an organic vegetable cooperative and is getting ready to study agronomy at the university, she gets surprised looks.
“The people are the only thing that matters,” says agronomist Miguel Ángel Salcines, who then goes on to list a series of other “secondary” factors that have turned Vivero Alamar, an urban farm on the outskirts of the Cuban capital, into a rare success story in the country’s depressed agricultural sector.
Despite the growing worldwide demand for organic food, clothing and other products, the area of land certified as organic still makes up just 0.9 percent of global agricultural land, with 37 million hectares being farmed organically.
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