The potential of these farmer-to-farmer exchanges for strengthening the struggles of farmers, and workers, in both countries was evident at a June 3 Militant Labor Forum here featuring participants in the delegation to the congress of the National Association of Small Farmers, held in Havana last month. The delegation from the United States was made up of working farmers active in farm struggles in the Midwest, South, and New England.

Randy Jasper, a Wisconsin dairy farmer and activist in the American Raw Milk Producers Pricing Association and Family Farm Defenders, said in his presentation that he learned "two shocking things" about Cuban farmers. First, was "how well respected the farmers are" and second, "they actually make money!"

Jasper explained that Cuban farmers sell to the government about 80 percent of what they produce, and are paid a price that covers the cost of production, plus a surplus. "This is guaranteed," he said. The other 20 percent can be sold by farmers at the market.

For the approximately 10 percent of farmers who cannot cover costs with this arrangement, "it's against the law to repossess their farms," he explained. "The government works with these farmers so they can make it."

He contrasted this to the situation in Wisconsin where an average of six dairy farmers a day are forced to give up farming because they cannot cover their costs. Jasper said that in the past year the number of farmers has increased by 25,000 in Cuba. "If you want to farm, they will provide land," he said.

The delegation learned that a high percentage of the fruits and vegetables eaten in Havana are raised in city gardens, cultivated by volunteers as well as full-time workers. "There is a different outlook when a person volunteers to produce food and shares that product with others," he said. "This is a society that understands where food comes from."

The delegation visited a cooperative of 500 people where farmers worked the land together, pooling their machinery. The coop included a medical center and school. Jasper was surprised to find that quitting time was as early as 5:00 p.m.

He spoke of the difficulties these farmers face as a result of the reduction in trade from the Soviet Union in the early 1990s and the U.S. economic embargo. The tractors from Belarus are old and lacking parts, he said, and Cuban farmers told them they "were never much good even when they were new." Fuel shortages have obliged many Cuban farmers to use oxen and mules to do farm work.  
 
Challenges in dairy production
The dairy cows suffer from the hot climate and a lack of feed high enough in protein. The powdered milk supply on which Cuba depended virtually disappeared with the collapse of favorable trade relations with Eastern Europe, but still every child from one to seven years old, and pregnant women and the elderly, get a liter of milk a day. Pointing to the Chicago street outside where the forum was being held, Jasper commented that he would be surprised if every child up and down that street got a liter a day. "The Cubans have a limited amount, but they put it where it does the most good."

Jasper was impressed with the friendliness and spontaneous responses of the people the U.S. farmers talked with in Cuba, many whom they met on the street as they traveled around. "They didn't just want to listen," he said. "They wanted to talk with you, to express their views, and ask questions. They didn't talk against the people of the United States, but they don't say good things about the U.S. government--but neither do I."

He was struck by the expressions of solidarity. When the U.S. farmers explained to a group of older Cubans how farmers were losing their land in the United States, the reaction was one of dismay. "This is something they didn't know about," he said.

He explained that before this trip he knew little about the Cuban revolution, except things he heard such as "Castro is a raving maniac" and "they have everyone locked up in jail."

Jasper heard Fidel Castro speak when he addressed the farmers' congress. "I learned more history from that speech than I did in all my years in high school," he said. "I learned about Cuban history, but also about the world, because he spoke of how Cuba fit into the world.

Castro explained that most anything of commercial value in Cuba was owned by U.S. corporations before the revolution. "That explains a lot about what happened after they kicked the U.S. companies out," Jasper commented.  
 
Farmers making decisions
Basu, an organic vegetable farmer from Pembroke Township, Illinois, was also on the delegation. He is a leader of a farmers' co-op and a member of Pembroke Advocates for Truth, a group that is fighting the proposed placement of a prison next to farmland worked by his family and other organic farmers.

Basu contrasted the high-handed methods of U.S. government officials trying to force the prison on the Pembroke farming community, operating behind the backs of the people, to the way he saw decisions being made in Cuba.

"At the congress we saw farmers sitting down together, making the rules and regulations for themselves, voting on their decisions," he said. "No one else is defining Cuba's destiny. No one else can tell that country what to do--this is part of the revolution."

Basu said he did not find the kind of expansion of prisons in Cuba that is happening in the United States. "The emphasis is on things like education, free schools, free medical care." The prison they are trying to build in Pembroke is "immoral," he said. "There will be people there who were railroaded; there will be profits coming out of human bondage."

Pointing to photos on the wall of the Militant Labor Forum that show picket lines of workers on strike, of demonstrations, and farmers' protests, he said, "Prison are being built against things like that, to contain us."  
 
Worker and farmer alliance
Another member of the delegation, Myrna Towner, a meat packer and member of the United Food and Commercial Workers union, began her remarks by quoting Raúl Castro, the Cuban vice president and minister of the Revolutionary Armed Forces, who attended the entire farm congress in Cuba and participated in the discussion.

Raúl Castro explained that the political weight of Cuban farmers today is rooted in the history of the revolution. "The Mambi army fought with machetes for Cuban independence," he said. "Who were they? Peasants. Who led the Rebel Army 40 years ago? Peasants," the Cuban leader said. "The unity of the workers and farmers is the motor force of the revolution."

Towner said that wherever the U.S. delegation went, talking to people in the streets, and in their travels, everyone knew about the small farmers congress. It was front page news in the paper every day.

Farmers are held in respect in Cuba, Towner explained, because they, in alliance with the workers, made a revolution that won political power and they continue to take leadership in running society today. She said the congress "taught us a lot about this alliance between the workers and farmers."

She pointed out that the congress registered, in the interventions of one farmer after another, their pride in the role farmers have played in breaking the back of the economic crisis that followed the cutback of Soviet trade.

The nearly 1,000 farmers who were delegates to the congress grappled with how to continue to use their creativity and energy to raise production in the face of many seemingly unsolvable difficulties. "What has made the Cuban revolution unique today," Towner stressed, "is that it is the workers and farmers, and not a privileged layer of technicians and functionaries , who are in the drivers seat." She described the beginning of a decisive political effort that gave more weight to politics and increased working-class mobilizations in the l980s, known as "rectification," which countered the emergence of a privileged layer of professionals and administrators whose policies were stifling the leadership, creativity, and involvement of the masses.  
 
Effect of retreat
As Cuba was forced into the world market in the 1990s and suffered the effects of the capitalist economic crisis, especially as it hits the underdeveloped countries, the "workers and farmers engaged in a combination of necessary retreats and a campaign for political consciousness," she said. The retreats, including, the rapid expansion of tourism, the fact that most imported goods are available only for dollars, the introduction of more individual as opposed to collective incentives, and other measures. The result has been the removal of many obstacles to increasing production, but this has also led to a greater social differentiation in wages and income, and the development of a layer of parasitic middlemen.

These things undermine the social solidarity that is so strong in Cuba, and pose new challenges.

The congress discussed how to make sure government contracts for buying the farmers' produce are fair, and don't take the whole crop. They also discussed how to produce more, with more variety, and measures to lower prices paid by workers--in short how to strengthen the alliance bewteen workers and farmers and deepen social solidarity.

All the speakers described the rallies and speakouts that continue against Washington's economic and political war against the Cuban revolution, focusing on the demand to return Elián González to Cuba, but also denouncing the U.S. government's embargo.

Randy Jasper commented that "the fight around Elián González seemed to have made the Cuban people into a stronger fighting group."

International delegations at the farmers' congress in Cuba included the indigenous farmers organization that led the January mobilizations in Ecuador and a delegation from the Movement of Landless Rural Workers in Brazil.

The visits of the U.S. farmers have had an impact in Cuba, Towner said. When Cubans talk with the U.S. farmers who are fighting the same enemy they are fighting--the same capitalist families who own the banks and agribusiness companies that put farmers into a price-cost squeeze--they can see allies among working people in the United States.

Towner ended her remarks by pointing to the significance of the growing number of strikes and other resistance by workers in the United States and the fact that some farmers are beginning to link up with this. "A worker-farmer alliance is being forged here too," she said. "That shows what is possible."

The lively discussion that followed the three presentations dealt with all these questions and more.  
 
 
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