Butts, a farmer from Florida, spoke to a group of 23 people at the University of Houston, part of a four-day visit to the area to discuss the farm crisis and the Cuban revolution. He was interviewed on a popular local radio program and by the Texas A&M University Agnet news service in College Station, which makes its programming available to affiliates across the state. Butts was also the featured speaker at a Militant Labor Forum, and spoke with workers outside of a meatpacking plant at shift change.

The farmers were hosted in Cuba by the National Association of Small Farmers. They were able to attend the organization's convention, visit Cuban farms, see for themselves the conditions on the land, and talk to them about the revolution and the problems faced by working farmers in the United States.

"Cuba is an example of what happens when the people take control of their society," he said at the university meeting. "There, the wealth that is created by labor is used for the benefit of all, not just that of a few billionaires." By making a revolution and carrying out a thorough-going agrarian reform, peasants won title to their land, he said. This cannot be taken away from them "because the Cuban Revolution ended the system of rents and mortgages that exploits people around the world."

A student asked Butts how agriculture differed in the United States and Cuba. Pointing to a slide of a research center in Cuba, the Florida farmer said that farmers in the United States are pressed by capitalist market forces to use chemical-intensive methods, often regardless of safety, environmental, or long-term land-use considerations.

In Cuba, he said, "they take time and look at all chemicals, using good science to carefully measure their effects. This has enabled Cuban farmers to cut their use of chemical inputs over the years and rely on biological and other controls developed by scientists who work together with the farmers."

Butts describing how farmers are gouged through interest payments by the banks and high prices from the monopoly oil companies and chemical manufacturers. "The seed merchants, implement makers and dealers, and insurance companies then take their cut," he said. "And after all this, the farmer is then faced with the uncertainties of the market. If all the farmers have really productive years, we all go broke at harvest time."

A rancher from central Texas agreed with Butts and explained that he had "sold some calves recently and got only $1.08 per pound. Compare that to the $5.00 per pound for a T-bone steak in the supermarket. That price has nothing to do with the price farmers get for their efforts."
 
 
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