Organopónicos

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The collapse of the Soviet Bloc in 1989-1990 deprived Cuba of its main source of agrochemicals. These included the fertilisers for the hydroponic units which were the market gardens of the city. The conversion of the hydroponic units, which created the first organopónicos, was one element of the almost complete adoption of the methods of organic farming which was implemented in the mid 1990s. Thousands of new urban individual farmers called Parceleros and farmer cooperatives were developed with the support of the Cuban Ministry of Agriculture (MINAGRI) making Cuba the only country in the world that has developed an extensive state-supported infrastructure to support urban food production. All garden crops such as beans, tomatoes, bananas, lettuce, okra, eggplant, and taro are grown intensively within the city using only organic farming methods since these are the only methods permitted in the urban parts of Havana.

The original hydroponic units, long cement planting troughs and raised metal containers, were filled with composted sugar waste and hydroponicos became organopónicos.

The rapid expansion of urban agriculture in the early 1990s included the colonisation of vacant land both by community and commercial groups. The basic principle of raised bed gardening was applied to the construction of new 'organopónicos'. The most common materials used were the fossilised coral substrate, and asbestos sheets. In Havana, organopónicos are found in vacant lots, old parking lots, abandoned building sites, spaces between roads.

As new sites were constructed in varying ways, organopónico buried its hydroponic roots and came to mean an urban and organic market garden. Some are run by Minagri employees, some are co-operatives.

An organopónico is very efficient in getting food to the people who need it by avoiding transportation from the countryside farms. These producers sell their products in the same place where they produce them, avoiding taxes so in general their prices are lower, and in fact allowing producers to make a good income growing.^[1]

Organopónicos provide on the average 215 grams of vegetables per day to Cuban city dwellers. Yields have more than quintupled from 4 to 24 kilograms per meter squared between 1994 and 1999, and currently around a million tons of food per year is produced in the organopónicos.^[2]