I was concerned, however, about the last paragraph of the article, where Britton quotes the director of one of Havana's urban gardens. The article says that the director explained "that as in other large urban gardens they began using substitutes for chemical pesticides and fertilizers by necessity during the Special Period, but now it is by choice."

My understanding is that the urban garden program was instituted in 1994 as one of the measures aimed at making food more accessible to workers in urban areas. The law setting up the program stipulated certain chemicals and fertilizers would be prohibited out of concern for people living and working in close proximity to the farms. So a choice never existed, if this is true.

This would be only a quibble, if it weren't for the impression readers of the Militant might take away in reading this paragraph that the socialist press, by reporting this particular statement, has given a certain political weight to the concept of organic production being preferable to that where "chemicals" are used. At least this is how it struck me.

Readers may also come away thinking Cuba generally chooses not to use chemicals in agricultural production.

Organic farming is a bourgeois concept, and it has nothing to do with the fight to feed the world. I don't think it is in the interests of workers and farmers to give any credence to this marketing ploy in the socialist press. Communists in imperialist countries should be especially sensitive about being perceived as advocating idealistic solutions in a world of 800 million chronically hungry.

Karl Butts
Tampa, Florida
 
 
Related article:
Beneath organic farming hype is hostility to science alien to interests of workers, farmers  
 
 
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