Grow Food in the City

Backgrounder

Do you live in a city where you spend much of your hard-earned income just to eat? Or, are you a farmer struggling to get food to city markets — battling the high cost of refrigeration and transportation? If this describes you, here’s something of interest.

In the country of Cuba, a large quantity of food is grown in the cities, where most people live. An economic crisis in the early 1990s forced Cuba to take a different approach to feeding its people. Cuba’s goal is to produce much of the food the cities need in the cities themselves. This is a way to feed people and reduce the cost of transporting and refrigerating foods.

Will Cuba succeed? Well, it is certainly off to a good start! Let’s look at the example of Havana, the capital city.

Havana is a large city. Two million people live there. The government encourages peple to use all available spaces to grow food. Today there are over 5,000 community gardens and 2,000 small farms in and around Havana. The previous system of growing food in the country and transporting it to the cities required refrigeration, transportation, storage and a distribution system. All this required a lot of energy — especially petroleum and electricity. By growing food in the city Cuba has greatly reduced its dependence on expensive petroleum.

The city of Havana even has its own Director of Agriculture. He is Mr. Eugenio Fuster. Mr. Fuster says that the city’s goal is to some day produce ALL of its own food.

Cuba now has one of the most successful urban agriculture programs in the world. By encouraging people to establish home gardens, community gardens, and small farms within cities, Cuba is working to produce the food FOR the city IN the city.

If you live in a city or town, perhaps you could grow some food to eat or sell from your garden.