Cuba's urban farming program a stunning success

[Judi Lynn]

Cuba's urban farming program a stunning success
Posted on Sun, Jun. 08, 2008

By NIKO PRICE
Associated Press Writer

HAVANA -- For Miladis Bouza, the global food crisis arrived two decades ago. Now, her efforts to climb out of it could serve as a model for people around the world struggling to feed their families.

Bouza was a research biologist, living a solidly middle-class existence, when the collapse of the Soviet Union - and the halt of its subsidized food shipments to Cuba - effectively cut her government salary to $3 a month. Suddenly, a trip to the grocery store was out of reach.

So she quit her job, and under a program championed by then-Defense Minister Raul Castro, asked the government for the right to farm an overgrown, half-acre lot near her Havana home. Now, her husband tends rows of tomatoes, sweet potatoes and spinach, while Bouza, 48, sells the produce at a stall on a busy street.

Neighbors are happy with cheap vegetables fresh from the field. Bouza never lacks for fresh produce, and she pulls in between $100 to $250 a month - many times the average government salary of $19.

"All that money is mine," she said. "The only thing I have to buy is protein" - meat.

Cuba's urban farming program has been a stunning, and surprising, success. The farms, many of them on tiny plots like Bouza's, now supply much of Cuba's vegetables. They also provide 350,000 jobs nationwide with relatively high pay and have transformed eating habits in a nation accustomed to a less-than-ideal diet of rice and beans and canned goods from Eastern Europe.

More:
http://www.miamiherald.com/915/story/562727.html

[Bacchus39]

1. excellent, great to see people exploring economic opportunities

and demonstrating that reliance only on the state is not necessary. I wonder if the Cuban government is concerned about "equality" though since she now is pulling in alot more than the government controlled salary. now she'll be able to afford a cell phone and a pressure cooker. will the neighbors become envious???