Cuba is known worldwide as a pioneer of urban agriculture. As the collapse of the socialist trading bloc Comecon, the state economy of the island in the 1990s came in the worst crisis since the revolution, the Cuban leadership was forced on the system-immanent to date ideology of a rising industrialization and established in the following years, structures of an ecological resource use. Rather than give the government power politics from the hands and transfer them to the private sector, Cubans are now helping to build a sustainable self-sufficiency in the cities. Ecological approaches in the fruit and vegetables, as associated with (small) livestock in a confined space in city centers and suburban Surrounding area are part of the so-called Revolución Verde, the green revolution. Is little attention, however, the kleinparzellige far into the country's history reaching back knowledge agriculture. For decades after the ideal of industrialization pushed back and forgotten, the state began only in recent years to support the re-discovery of this knowledge.
precursors and development of urban agriculture
Due by the particular historical development of the main island of the Caribbean archipelago, there are the first forms of urban self-sufficiency during the times of mass slavery from the end of the 18th Century. The islands of the West Indies in Jamaica, including exact explored Huerto Casero (home gardens) or conucos a there were in Cuba and other islands of the Caribbean (Mayor 2001 / Castiñeras 2002). There meant the conucos, usually joined directly to the huts of urban slaves, for in African cultures uprooted people and their descendants of a certain economic and social freedom within the coercive regime of the English colonizers (see Roberts in Falola and Childs 2004). These parcels on which vegetables, fruits and herbs were grown, and should to feed the slaves themselves. They used the conucos but also to continue in the African cultures known methods of cultivation, to close quasi-familial ties and to integrate themselves in the strange culture and hostile environment. In addition to this socially-inclusive moment were at that time, if not consciously, handed down methods of cultivation of the variety of local fruits and vegetables, which were introduced before the start of colonization, especially by the Native Americans, the Tainos. As part of its traditional agricultural economy of the Tainos cultivated tropical crops, especially root vegetables like yuca and boniato, but also corn, peanuts, Peppers, pineapples, cotton and tobacco on Raised Beds. Up to now include the taste of the potato plants resembling yucca, malanga and boniato, even Vianda (food, but also root tuber) called a typical Cuban meal.
In the course of many of the Abolition of former slave cabins and gardens by common law inherited in the family. Even during the first half of the 20th Century, the habit still oppressed and marginalized descendants of former slaves in the family or quasi-family composite small city gardens, and some larger villas. From the beginning of the Cuban Revolution in 1959 in the domestic subsistence economy was, however, as the feature of underdevelopment and should be replaced by a less labor-intensive industrial production. 2 In the early 1960s, the first industrial techniques were used to plant in the city garden vegetables and fruit. While in the country large state farms (granjas estatales) emerged, in which the majority of sugarcane farmers, but also tobacco, rice, vegetables and fruit planting, gradually disappeared ecological methods such as the three-field system. Domestic cultivation methods were the pressure and the industrialization of the Cuban state passive Kooperativierungspolitik not stand. (Grote 2004) for the production of fresh Food in small spaces have been set up so-called Hidropónicos and Zeopónicos (input-intensive monoculture). The use of strong chemicals for fertilization and pest control should increase the rates of return. In the 1970s and 80s led to these systems with relatively little success in the cities (cf. Rodríguez Castellón, 2000).
early 90s, however, was the Cuban agricultural sector, now highly upgraded with Soviet harvesters and almost completely dependent on imported Russian power feed, but fallen apart.
a The term Conuco comes from the Caribbean and was used during colonization as a description of the gardens, the slaves from their owners have been provided. Today so often rural Subsistenzgärten be designated Conuco can also simply mean "Hügelbeet.
2 Not to be forgotten eliminated the social gains of the revolution, free education campaigns for all Cubans included, and the racist practice of everyday life. This developed A strong solidarity of the formerly marginalized classes with the socialist government (see de la Fuente 2001).
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