Havana: Cuba can be a global reference in the implementation of agro-ecology and, in this way, become one of the identity signs of the Island for the rest of the world, experts consider today, Prensa Latina publishes.
The largest of the Antilles is one of the countries that uses the least agrochemicals, either for voluntary or involuntary reasons, such as the US blockade, and also has a generous bio-capacity above the global average, the head of Cooperation of the European Union in Cuba, Juan Garay explained.
Agroecology, he stressed, is more than organic farming, it is the way to care for the Earth and all natural cycles, to feed society in a healthy and balanced way.
Therefore, it implies not only ecology and agriculture as ways of producing food, but also that it accompanies the connections with the cycles in nature, water, microelements, biodiversity, forests, minerals, and all those cycles integrated with each other.
In the case of Cuba, this practice is compounded by a courageous, resilient, self-sacrificing and highly educated population, and it simply requires that a significant proportion of young people work those lands, capture more usufructs, and have the support to have a comfortable and pleasant life in Cuba. the field, he said.
Garay recalled that on the Island there is a great professional capacity, with institutes or research centers in almost every municipality in the nation – potentialities that do not exist in all the countries of the world -, and has possibilities for training, research, dissemination and above all of innovation.
Today we analyze, he said, how to establish in those municipalities places of creation and prototyping designs to apply new ways on how to use energy, farm implements or water balances.
Although for this it is necessary to mobilize a lot of knowledge, he reflected, it is not essential to be a university graduate or achieve a master’s degree for a peasant to use agroecology, but it is necessary to rescue many traditional knowledge.
Sometimes the great teachers are not the professors, he added, but the farmers themselves who have been innovating for 20 years and learned from their parents, there is a fundamental knowledge, because they are millennial enough to take care of the land.
We have to unlearn many concepts to transform the matrix of intensive agriculture, he continued, because sometimes it is only necessary to obtain maximum production without taking into account the balance of the planet.
On the island there is already a lot of knowledge, people wanting to work and vacant fields that can increase the hectares that are already in production with this type of organic farming.
So, all the elements exist so that Cuba does not need to import a grain of any food, he assured.
Regarding the work of the European Union in Cuba, Garay said that for 20 years they have had programs to support agriculture and food security.
They currently work in the Sustainable Food Security program with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, the United Nations Development Program and with the Ministry of Agriculture as the governing body of the activity throughout the country.
But they also collaborate in the development of the food and nutritional sovereignty plan, in the preliminary draft of a law.
Together with these actions, they are also in the phase of designing the bases of a new cooperation programming oriented towards the sustainable municipality, in an accompaniment to the process that occurs in the country to establish decentralized municipal governance.
Finally, he highlighted the start of a project on agroecological tourism. “We have the illusion that first dozens of farms will participate, then hundreds and later that thousands will have the capacities to welcome people and inspire them in that way of life,” he said.
This network of possible farms for the practice of agroecological tourism could have many positive effects, such as facilitating certain inputs to the peasants for their investments in agriculture, in a more comfortable and pleasant life in the field, as well as means of transport, communication , water, and for the use of renewable energy sources.
But also establish a connection with sensitive people around the world who will radiate those ideas from Cuba.
With this agroecological tourism project we can attract many people inside and outside the country to that magic within the field, it is a brave bet for a healthy and caring world.
The island will multiply its many friends, because I tell you, whoever knows Cuba falls in love with it.
Redacción Digital
Equipo de redactores del sitio web de Radio Mayabeque
