Organopónicos are a system of urban organic gardens in Cuba. They often consist of low-level concrete walls filled with organic matter and soil, with lines of drip irrigation laid on the surface of the growing media. Organopónicos provide access to job opportunities, a fresh food supply to the community, neighborhood improvement and beautification of urban areas.
Organopónicos first arose as a community response to lack of food security after the collapse of the Soviet Union. They are publicly functioning in terms of ownership, access and management, but heavily subsidized and supported by the Cuban government.
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During the Cold War, the Cuban economy relied heavily on support from the Soviet Union. In exchange for sugar, Cuba received subsidized oil, chemical fertilizers, pesticides and other farm products. Approximately 50 percent of Cuba's food was imported. Cuba's food production was organized around Soviet-style, large-scale, industrial agricultural collectives.[1] Before the collapse of the Soviet Union, Cuba used more than 1 million tons of synthetic fertilizers a year and up to 35,000 tons of herbicides and pesticides a year.[1]
With the USSR collapsed, Cuba lost its main trading partner and the favorable trade subsidies it received, as well as access to oil, chemical fertilizers, pesticides etc. From 1989 to 1993, the Cuban economy contracted by 35 percent; foreign trade dropped 75 percent.[1] Without Soviet aid, domestic agriculture production fell by half. This time, called in Cuba the Special Period, food scarcities became acute. The average per capita calorie intake fell from 2,900 a day in 1989 to 1,800 calories in 1995. Protein consumption plummeted 40 percent.[1]
Without food, Cubans had to learn to start growing their own food rather than importing it. This was done through small private farms and thousands of pocket-sized urban market gardens—and, lacking chemicals and fertilizers, food became de facto organic.[2] Thousands of new urban individual farmers called parceleros (for their parcelos, or plots) emerged. They formed and developed farmer cooperatives and farmers markets. These urban farmers found the support of the Cuban Ministry of Agriculture (MINAGRI), who provided university experts to train volunteers with organic pesticides and beneficial insects.
Without the fertilizers, hydroponic units from the Soviet Union were no longer usable. The systems were then converted for the use of organic gardening. 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 colonization of vacant land both by community and commercial groups. In Havana, organopónicos were created in vacant lots, old parking lots, abandoned building sites and even spaces between roads.
Cuba has more than 7,000 organopónicos. More than 200 gardens in Havana supply its citizens with more than 90% of their fruit and vegetables. 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.[3]
More than 35,000 hectares (over 87,000 acres) of land are being used in urban agriculture in Havana alone.[4] The city of Havana produces enough food for each resident to receive a daily serving of 280 grams (9.88 ounces) of fruits and vegetables. The urban agricultural workforce in Havana has grown from 9,000 in 1999 to 23,000 in 2001 to more than 44,000 in 2006.[4]
The structures of organopónicos vary from garden to garden. Some are run by employees of the state; others are run cooperatively by the gardeners themselves. The reliance on the state government cannot be overlooked. The government provides the community farmers with the land and the water. The gardens can buy key materials such as organic composts, seeds and irrigation parts, as well as "biocontrols" such as beneficial insects and plant-based oils that work as pesticides from the government . These biological pest and disease controls are produced in some 200 government centers across the country.[1]
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. No chemicals are used in 68% of Cuban corn, 96% of cassava, 72% of coffee and 40% of bananas. Between 1998 and 2001, chemicals were reduced by 60% in potatoes, 89% in tomatoes, 28% in onion and 43% in tobacco.[4]
There is some speculation onto which the organopónico system can be applied to other nations. For example, the film The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil argues that world oil production will reach its all-time peak and begin to decline forever. It also argues that Cuba has gone through such a crisis—a massive reduction of fossil fuels—and the organopónico system is an example of a proper response to peak oil and can be replicated in other parts of the world.
In Venezuela, the socialist government of Hugo Chavez is trying to introduce urban agriculture to the populace.[5] In Caracas, the government has launched Organoponico Bolivar I, a pilot program to bring organopónicos to Venezuela. Urban agriculture has not been embraced in Caracas as it has in Cuba.[5] Unlike Cuba, where organopónicos arose from the bottom-up out of necessity, the Venezuelan organopónicos are clearly a top-down initiative based on Cuba's success.
Another problem for urban agriculture in Venezuela is the high amounts of pollution in major Venezuelan urban areas. At the Organoponico Bolivar I, a technician comes every 15 days to take a reading from the small pollution meter in the middle of the garden.[5]