Cuba calls on citizens to grow own food as shortages bite
In the courtyard of a temple belonging to the Abakua AfroCuban religious brotherhood in Havana, Nelson Piloto is pulling up the lawn to plant bell peppers and cassava in the face of Cuba’s looming food crisis.
Piloto, 40, says he is responding to the Communist government’s call for citizens to produce more of their own food, including in big cities, in whatever spaces they can find, from backyards to balconies.
The temple usually resounds with ceremonies involving drumming, animal sacrifices and dance. Now it sits empty due to lockdown restrictions on gatherings.
Food security has lately risen to the top of the national agenda in Cuba, with countless news headlines and televised roundtable discussions dedicated to the topic.
“Cuba can and must develop its programme of municipal self-sustainability definitively and with urgency, in the face of the obsessive and tightened US blockade and the food crisis Covid-19 will leave,” José Ramón Machado Ventura, 89, deputy leader of the Cuban Communist Party, said via staterun media on Monday.
The Caribbean island imported roughly two-thirds of the food it consumed at a cost of around $2bn annually, in addition to farming supplies like fertiliser, machinery and animal feed. But imports have nosedived in recent years as aid from ally Venezuela shrank following its economic implosion and US President Donald Trump tightened the half century-old US trade embargo.
That led first to shortages of imported food and then to drops in national agricultural production. Output of Cuban staples like rice, tomatoes and pork fell 18%, 13% and 8% last year. The pandemic, which has paralysed the key tourism sector, has exacerbated the situation.
Activists are signing up in some provinces to do voluntary work in the fields and authorities have distributed leaflets to urban neighborhood leaders on family farming. —