Good Fruit Grower

January 2017

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www.goodfruit.com GOOD FRUIT GROWER JANUARY 1, 2017 23 staples of a Cuban diet, declined between 2008 and 2015. Despite growing demand for food in part tied to increased tourism in Cuba, the Communist Party last April dialed back some agricultural reforms, Reuters reported. Delegates voted to eliminate licenses for private wholesale food distribution and increased the scope of price controls on food from 51 percent to 80 to 90 percent. Against this backdrop of acute need and modest success, our tour last fall brought us to a 25-acre coop- erative farm near Havana, where we met Miguel Angel Salcines Lopez, presidente Coopererativa UBPC Organoponico Vivero Alamar. The farm served as a regular stop for tourists, some of whom left gifts for the workers. I spotted one worker wearing a Harvard baseball cap and a Rainier Beach T-shirt from Seattle. Lopez oversees the growing of broccoli, cauliflower, lettuce, beets, tomatoes, onions and other food crops sold mainly to markets, hotels and nearby residents. Dressed in a bush hat and safari shirt, Lopez joked that he had to keep prices reasonable or his neighbors would kill him. Like other Cubans, Lopez spoke of the U.S. "blockade" as an ongoing problem. He can't get supplies. He has trouble fi nding valves, seeds, chemicals, equipment and emitters for his irriga- tion systems. He borrows growing ideas from the U.S., China and elsewhere. He once visited California for a conference on organic growing; during that trip, he could only envy the multitude of goods he saw at Home Depot. The life of the Cuban farmer is to scrounge and make do with less. And yet Cuban pride, resiliency and spirit came through as he spoke of life on the farm. At age 66, Lopez certainly knows hardship, and like all Cubans he can only imagine what change might come from fully liberalized trade with the U.S. But for him, life remains a source of amusements that he can't resist sharing. Asked about his work force, Lopez said 40 of his 120 employees were women. "Women are more intelligent and reliable than men," he said through a translator. He paused and grinned. • Above, a worker and a horse take a break from chores on a farm cooperative. Not surprisingly for an organization with modest resources, most of the built structures here looked as if they had been assembled from scrap lumber, but nonetheless served their purpose. At left, the cooperative's Rescursos Humanos offi ce is in a rusted- out trailer. Miguel Angel Salcines Lopez is president of a farm cooperative. necessity

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