AGRICULTURE-CUBA: Restructuring in Rural Mountain Areas

By Patricia Grogg Reprint | | Print |

Patricia Grogg

HAVANA, Aug 10 2004 (IPS) - Cuban authorities are focusing on coffee, cacao, stockbreeding, poultry, and forests in a plan to more efficiently exploit the country’s mountainous regions and improve living conditions, through a restructuring of agricultural activities.

Hills and mountains cover 18 percent of this Caribbean island nation and are home to 977 villages with a total population of 700,000 of Cuba’s 11.2 million people.

Projects for breathing new life into the mountainous areas began to be implemented in 1987 when Plan Turquino went into effect, with a focus on production, conservation, and social and cultural development.

The Plan is also aimed at improving living conditions in mountainous regions, to check the exodus of people from highland villages that are isolated, and where climatic conditions are tougher than in the lowlands and on the coast, with temperatures dipping low and greater exposure to the damaging rays of the sun.

There are four mountain chains in Cuba: Guaniguanico to the west; Guamuhaya or Escambray in the centre of the island; and the Sierra Maestra and Nipe-Sagua-Baracoa mountains in the east.

From the start, Plan Turquino aimed at extending sustainable agricultural practices, protecting the forests, preserving the soil, and recycling waste.

But a new element has been added. The socialist government of Fidel Castro now plans to leave in place only 62 percent of the highlands coffee plantations, after selecting the areas that provide the best yields, where technological investments will be made with the goal of eventually increasing output twofold.

The restructuring is to continue through 2010, and will start in villages in the main mountain chains, said Agriculture Ministry adviser Ramón González Paradela.

One of the aims is to foment production of organic coffee which, González Paradela pointed out, fetches ”a very good price on the international market.”

Government officials are involved in ”in-depth discussions with producers,” whose ”interests will be protected to the utmost,” because the coffee plantations are an important source of jobs in those areas, the official told the local weekly publication Opciones.

The areas that are left outside of the coffee production zones will be dedicated to forestry and fruit plantations, a strategy that is also being followed by the government on land that held sugar plantations until a radical restructuring of the sugar industry got underway two years ago.

Experts in agriculture say the island’s mountainous areas offer the best conditions for growing cacao and coconuts, especially the region of Baracoa, over 1,000 km southeast of Havana.

Coconut and organic cacao production will be encouraged as part of the effort to develop non-traditional exports.

Most of Cuba’s timber production comes from the country’s mountainous regions, where 37 percent are natural forests and the rest plantations, according to local environmental authorities.

The objective is to start expanding the forested areas as of this year, with new plantations of trees to be planted on 74,000 hectares that were previously dedicated to sugar cane production, in order to bring about ”truly sustainable management” of the country’s forests, said González Paradela.

But officials admit that there are persistent environmental problems in those areas like uncontrolled logging, slash-and-burn practices, forest fires, soil erosion and pollutants.

Other problems facing the mountainous areas are the reduction of plant cover, poor practices in soil usage and cultivation, and inadequate management of water basins.

Cuba is also carrying out a programme for reforestation of river basins, aimed at protecting water sources during times of drought – such as the one currently plaguing eastern Cuba – as experts predict that conditions on the island will become more and more arid.

Most of the island’s surface runoff is produced in the mountains, where one-third of the main river basins are found. The banks of several of the largest rivers in eastern Cuba have already been reforested.

In the past decade, Cuba’s forests have grown 1.3 percent, but officials say this year the severe drought has hurt the reforestation efforts in some areas.

Another of the original aims of Plan Turquino was for the local populations in the mountains to supply their own foodstuffs – an objective that has now been strengthened with an increase in production of vegetables in each rural settlement.

To boost the livelihoods of the people living in mountainous areas the idea is to expand stockbreeding of smaller animals like goats and pigs as well as poultry. Last year, half a million chickens were distributed to local peasant farmers to set up poultry farms, according to the Agriculture Ministry.

Cattle, however, ”should remain concentrated in certain areas, because otherwise cattle-breeding will continue affecting the environment,” said González Paradela.

Meanwhile, the Culture Ministry is implementing programmes focused on bringing culture – for example, tours by theatre troupes and musical shows – to mountain villages and towns, for which installations will have to be repaired and upgraded.

In the past few years, community TV and video rooms have been created in the distant mountain villages, powered by solar panels, as part of the government’s strategy to diversify energy sources.

A Mountain Museum which recently opened in the Escambray mountains gives visitors a glimpse into rural highland life, amidst a natural setting of endemic plants, of which there are an unusually abundant number of species. )