The Cubans, traveling in a tour bus, had visited farms, agricultural research centers, a packinghouse, and a number of other agricultural related places before coming to the Vernon Farmers Market. At the market the Cubans braved a torrential downpour as they toured the various produce stands.

The tour of the Cuban farmers was part of a Canada-Cuba farmer exchange program organized by farmers, agriculturists, and nongovernmental organizations from British Columbia in collaboration with Cuban counterparts. Earlier this year, as part of the exchange, 20 farmers from British Columbia visited Cuba and toured the island's farmland.

Neil Butler, a greenhouse farmer from Armstrong, British Columbia, who had a stand at the market, had heard much about the tour from a farmer in his region of the Okanogan who had gone to Cuba. The agrarian reforms that were at the heart of the Cuban revolution and eliminated the class exploitation of working farmers make a big impression on family farmers here who find out about that example (see feature on pages 7-8). Butler said he had done some reading on Cuba since his discussion with the fellow farmer and would liked to have gone to Cuba himself. "I understand that they hold farmers in higher regard in Cuba than they do here," he stated. "Here the farmer has to eke out a living."

The last couple of years have been hard for orchard farmers in the Okanogan Valley. Randy Kubbernus, an orchard farmer with a five-acre orchard in Oyama, British Columbia, lost 90 percent of his cherry crop this year and was reduced to dealing solely in peaches. He explained that cool morning temperatures and frost had been responsible for this. It wasn't just cherries that were hit, all crops of fruits and vegetables in the Okanogan were at least two weeks late in ripening this year. Last year fruit crops were damaged by unusually hot weather.

This crop damage, coupled with low commodity prices offered by the packinghouses, has devastated small orchard farmers in the Okanogan. As a result many small orchard farmers, like Randy Kubbernus, now rely entirely on the farmers markets for their income as they could not receive enough return from the packinghouses to survive. In response to this growing crisis, approximately 400 orchard farmers, predominately apple growers, held a rally on the lawn of the British Columbia legislature in Victoria in May demanding emergency aid.

Over the course of their tour here, the Cubans met with 600 farmers and visited a total of 120 farms throughout the province. Their visit concluded with a September 9 public meeting at the Roundhouse Community Center in Vancouver. The gathering, which was attended by approximately 150 people, summarized the tour and what was accomplished.

At the meeting the Cubans were able to explain the gains that have been made in agricultural production in Cuba. López, the head of the Cuban delegation, described the special period in which Cuba lost more than 80 percent of its foreign trade as a result of the abrupt end of trade relations on fair terms with the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe and the sudden need for Cuban products to compete in the world capitalist market. As a result, Cuba had to drastically cut petroleum imports and production and use of fertilizers and pesticides. Out of necessity they also shifted a greater portion of agriculture from mechanized farming to organic cultivation. Through this experience Cuban farmers have discovered many positive aspects of organic farming, López said, and have made other improvements in agricultural production. For example, they are now able to produce a more diverse variety of crops. They also concluded they didn't need some of the fertilizers and pesticides they relied upon under the previous system.

At the end of the meeting, López presented a gift to Wendy Holmes, the main organizer of the tour in British Columbia. He gave her a copy of the letter Ernesto Che Guevara wrote to Cuban president Fidel Castro upon leaving Cuba for the guerrilla campaign in Bolivia in the late 1960s. In the letter, Che, the Argentine-born revolutionary who became one of the central leaders of the Cuban revolution, explains the importance of proletarian internationalism. In presenting the letter, López said the Canada-Cuba farmers tour was in the spirit of that internationalism.

Aiden Ball is a member of the Young Socialists and an activist in the Cuban Youth Tour 2000 Committee.  
 
 
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