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	Cuba''s organic revolution by The Guardian & agencies   The collapse of the Soviet Union forced Cuba to become self-reliant in its agricultural production. The country''s innovative solution was urban organic farming, the creation of ''organoponicos''.   Organiponicos are the most visible part of Cuba''s unique answer to a very serious problem – how to feed its people.   Before the revolution nearly half the agricultural land in Cuba was owned by 1% of the people. After it, agriculture was nationalised and mechanised along Soviet lines. Trade with the once great superpower meant swapping sugarcane, which Cuba produced in industrial abundance, for cheap food and materials like machinery and petrochemical fertilisers.   But when the USSR collapsed in 1990/91, Cuba''s ability to feed itself collapsed with it. "Within a year the country had lost 80% of its trade," explains the Cuba Organic Support Group (COSG). Over 1.3m tonnes of chemical fertilisers a year were lost. Fuel for transporting produce from the fields to the towns dried up. People started to go hungry. The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (UNFAO) estimated that calorie intake plunged from 2,600 a head in the late 1980s to between 1,000 and 1,500 by 1993.   Radical action was needed, and quickly. "Cuba had to produce twice as much food, with less than half the chemical inputs," according to the COSG. Land was switched from export crops to food production, and tractors were switched for oxen. People were encouraged to move from the city to the land and organic farming methods were introduced.   "Integrated pest management, crop rotation, composting and soil conservation were implemented," says the COSG. The country had to become expert in techniques like worm composting and biopesticides. "Worms and worm farm technology is now a Cuban export," says Dr Stephen Wilkinson, assistant director of the International Institute for the Study of Cuba.   Thus, the unique system of organoponicos, or urban organic farming, was started. "Organoponicos are really gardens," explains Wilkinson, "they use organic methods and meet local needs."   "Almost overnight," says the COSG, the ministry of agriculture established an urban gardening culture. By 1995 Havana had 25,000 huertos – allotments, farmed by families or small groups – and dozens of larger-scale organoponicos, or market gardens. The immediate crisis of hunger was over.   Now, gardens for food take up 3.4% of urban land countrywide, and 8% of land in Havana. Cuba produced 3.2m tonnes of organic food in urban farms in 2002 and, UNFAO says, food intake is back at 2,600 calories a day.   A visit to Havana''s largest organoponico, the three-hectare Organoponico Plaza, confirms that the scheme is doing well. Rows of strikingly neat irrigated raised beds are home to seasonal crops of lettuces, spring onions, chives, garlic and parsley.   Guava and noni fruit trees provide shade around the perimeter, while on the far side compost piles sit next to plastic tunnels used to raise seedlings. Outside in the shop, signs extol the virtues of eating your greens.   The shop is open only on Mondays. Produce is sold by the people who work the garden (they keep 50% of sales, so are motivated to produce a lot) to the people who live nearby. In this case, the organoponico serves an estate that wouldn''t look out of place in Tower Hamlets or Easterhouse. Yet inside, butterflies flit and the head gardener, Toni, turns sod like he is digging at Prince Charles''s Highgrove estate.   A success then? "In terms of improving the diet of the population it has had a beneficial effect," says Wilkinson.   "And it has been a success in terms of meeting some of the food security needs," he says, "but it has not resolved the problem since the island still imports a great deal of food."   And change is on the horizon, which might be good for living standards, but not so good for Cuba''s commitment to pesticide-free food.   The US trade embargo is losing its "symbolic meaning", says Julie M Bunck, assistant professor of political science at the University of Louisville, and as that happens, "Cuba will evolve, embrace the market in some way, begin to produce and buy and sell normally."   General farming will "most likely" move away from organic methods says Wilkinson. Farming on a large scale after all, he says, has seen a reduction in pesticide and fertiliser use mainly due to "financial constraints, not choice".   But, he notes: "Organoponicos fulfil a local and specific need and are unlikely to disappear."   He adds: "The commitment to organics in agriculture may not be 100% because of climate and the need to boost production. But policies that encourage environmental protection will continue so long as the present government remains."   Alternative Nobel Prize Goes to Cuban Group Promoting the Organic Revolution.   The Grupo de Agricultura Organica (GAO), the Cuban organic farming association, which has been at the forefront of the country''s transition from industrial to organic agriculture, was named as winner of a major international prize--the Right Livelihood Award--commonly known as the ''Alternative Nobel Prize.''   The Grupo de Agricultura Organica is one of four winners of the Right Livelihood Award, chosen from more than 80 candidates from 40 countries.   GAO brings together farmers, farm managers, field experts, researchers, and government officials to develop and promote organic farming methods. Its aim is to convince Cuban farmers and policy-makers that the country''s previous high-input farming model was too import-dependent and environmentally damaging to be sustainable, and that the organic alternative has the potential to achieve equally good yields.   "This award is truely an honor for Cuba, for GAO, and for all the farmers, researchers, and policy makers who have struggled to make organic farming work in Cuba," said Dr. Fernado Funes-Aguilar, President of GAO. "We hope that our efforts will demonstrate to other countries that conventional chemically-dependent agriculture is not the only way to feed a country."
	The Least Developed Countries Report 2008 by UNCTAD UN Conference on Trade & Development   July 17, 2008   Least developed countries are achieving record rates of economic expansion, but growth is failing to trickle down into significantly improved well-being for the majority of their population.   The Least Developed Countries Report 2008 argues that this results from the type of economic growth and development strategy that these countries are following.   In order to decisively reduce material deprivation and embark on economic and social development, LDCs need to adopt new types of development strategies that are nationally formulated and owned. One of the elements of this change is to adopt management policies for the official development aid they receive.   Economic expansion in the LDCs since 2000 has been stronger than in the 1990s. In 2005 and 2006, there was a further growth acceleration and the LDCs together achieved the strongest growth performance for thirty years.   However, rapid economic growth has been associated with a slow rate of poverty reduction and progress towards the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).   The LDCs as a group are unlikely to reach the goal of reducing the incidence of poverty by half between 1990 and 2015. Most of these countries are also off track to achieve most of the other MDGs.   There is no evidence of a significant change in trends in social development since 2000, after the adoption of the Millennium Declaration and more socially-oriented policy reforms.   The LDCs remain very vulnerable to a growth slow-down as they are still characterized by low levels of domestic resource mobilization and investment, very weak development of manufacturing industries, high levels of commodity dependence, weak export upgrading, rising food and oil import bills and growing trade deficits.   Given this macroeconomic scenario and the pervasive poverty prevailing in LDCs, these countries have been hit very hard by soaring international food prices. In many of them the domestic price of some food staples has doubled.   This is compressing the budget of poor families, which spend 50 - 80 per cent of their income on food. Therefore, the food crisis is likely to slow down - or even reverse - the limited progress achieved so far towards reducing poverty and malnutrition in LDCs.   The Report argues that the achievement of a more sustainable and inclusive type of economic growth requires effective national development strategies, which are supported by effective development aid and development-friendly international regimes for trade, investment and technology.   Enhanced country ownership of national development strategies is critical for development and aid effectiveness. In order to reach these aims, LDCs are advised to implement aid management policies. These policies will allow aid to be more effective, providing a more powerful contribution to development.   * Visit the link below to access the report. Visit the related web page
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