Havana Homegrown: Inside Cuba's Urban Agriculture Revolution

This video from the nonprofit group SeedMoney (seedmoney.org ) looks at the urban agriculture revolution in Havana, Cuba and its origins.
Cuba is not only an island nation in terms of its geography, but also its economy and politics as a result of the US embargo and the fall of the Soviet Union, Cuba's largest source of trade and aid until the Berlin Wall fell in 1991. Cut off from the world's pipeline of food, oil, chemical pesticides and fertilizers, Cuba embarked upon an ambitious program to grow as much of its own organic food as possible in the 1990s during what was known as the "special period." This short video produced by the nonprofit group Kitchen Gardeners International (KGI) peeks into Havana's urban farms and gardens to see what lessons they have to offer other cities working to move toward sustainable food security.

[@JK-musick]

I strongly believe that Cuba is way ahead in the race to establish sustainable agriculture as a formal agricultural way of production.

[@odin422]

WE COULD ALL LEARN A LESSON FROM THESE ORGANIC-FERTILIZER FREE FARMERS! they are awesome

[@tripled7198]

Thank you, I enjoyed watching this clip. Food Security is a huge issue as our resources get more constrained. Thank you for an enlightening video.

[@synapsecracklepop]

factories, commercial property, homes and land in foreclosure... un-remarketable... sitting idle, while millions of unemployed would happily volunteer to reclaim the land... to re-purpose it, for housing and agriculture... even small business. we're nuts... nothing of merit happens sometimes, until the right people stand to profit, in America Thanks for posting

[@eatingyumyum]

awesome. Very interesting. I love the fact that the cubans have learnt how to grow there own food then expecting help from others. I wish more people will look at this and start up there own gardens.

[@AaronMk91]

Something somewhat touched up on when I took an Envriomental Science class a few months ago for college. We discussed stuff like urban farming and I believe we may have watched a video of a simaler project going on in New York city.

[@johnnyfontenot682]

So awesome!! I wish to travel to Cuba and am very interested in studying the realtion between that 'weight' loss issue and heart disease.

[@mehdy8]

thanks for this video, it really helped with my geography research :)

[@mikecorbeil]

Liked & favourited. It isn't an extensive sort of documentary video, but it's certainly about an important p.o.v. or perspective. Sanctions against Cuba are still maintained today by Washington & its compliant so-called allies; & it's all extremely criminal, hypocritical, hegemonic, & so on. But the Cuban govt & population have proven the, an or some ability to survive through this, & the country indeed does serve as a great example of human resourcefulness. Not only that, it's also generous.

[@Moondoggxxx]

if people would jjust grow thier oen veggies at home, the huge corporate farms could shrink and help out the enviroment and cut back on pollution, everyone has thier own cows and chickens - a barn attachment for everyhouse

[@MrBrokefarmer]

Wow. I'm a Canadian farmer. We must have been styling back only a few years ago. We always used waste from our animals in our gardens. Haha. You can't possibly ask people to work all day for peanuts to grow small amounts of food. Never worked anywhere. Just survival kicking in. Maybe if they sold there stuff to tourists with money dropping out of their jeans at a very high price. As they now do. Haha.. Your hungry with a hoe and no equipment ,chemicals or manufactured fertilizers, you do what you can do. The good land in the countryside is growing weeds. 1000s of acres. Depressing. I see Monsanto and a Jewish company are investing in real life farming now in Cuba. Hopefully the fields of weeds and run down farms in the rural areas improve. You have to leave the 30 mile radius to see real agriculture. High iron content high production farmland mostly in weeds. I believe they are low on potash and nitrogen . Two components that costs more than they can afford or even secure. Such a beautiful country with beautiful people. Love Cuba! Bit what do I know...I grow enough to make 1.2 million loaves of bread and 400000 liters of cooking oil.

[@SeedMoneyorg]

@cgalgeciras I'm sure there would be some who would go back to chemicals, just as I'm sure there are many conventional farmers in the US who would like to stop using chemicals if the economic and political conditions allowed them to. Couched in your comment is the notion that organic systems are by their nature less productive than their chemical counterparts and the Cuban example (and others around the world) is challenging that.

[@L555West]

@cgalgeciras Poly-cultures can actually over-yield mono-cultures. Emulating nature in this way means that you don't need any pesticides or chemical-ridden fertilizers to sustain the crop. Check out the work of Wes Jackson and The Land Institute.. really inspirational stuff!

[@trollprepper]

wow, awesome.. I bet you can't wait till it sucks that bad here

[@VendPrekmurec]

Eco Socialism is the future! Nature, people & faith in common good!

[@SeedMoneyorg]

@kryptiea Actually, there was a lot of diversity of crops in the gardens (and the photos), but maybe not what you're expecting. You need to know that we were visiting during the winter so the beds were full of lettuces and other greens, alliums and brassicas, often interplanted in the same bed...very far from a monoculture.

[@mikecorbeil]

Probably no other country sent as many medical professionals to Haiti to try to help Haitians in very bad circumstances, due to environmental catastrophies, as well as US, Canadian and French imperialism, et cetera; including awful UN peace-keeping, which was anything but peace-keeping (see reporting by Kevin Pina, such as his documentaries at the longmemoryprod channel at KZbin, about US et al, including UN PK'ers actions). These weren't the only humanitarian merits of Cuba, either.

[@rafaelcarvalho5082]

what music is this

[@rafaelcarvalho5082]

no worries, found it already =D

[@JFAINTER88]

damn. living off a dollar a day.

[@kryptiea]

lol talks about planting diversity but all the pictures are nothing but monoculture.

[@Lario]

Nice how you start the video off with a shot of a mural of Che Guevara, a communist and murderer.