Vol. 75/No. 45      December 12, 2011

Participants, including Cuban farmers from across the island, visited cooperative farms in several provinces, where farmers explained intensified efforts since 2008 to bring back into production arable land abandoned during Cuba’s economic crisis of the 1990s, to increase food production, and to reduce food imports. In the last three years, more than 1.2 million hectares (3 million acres) of idle land has been distributed to farmers, including some who are farming for the first time.

Participants also heard reports from ANAP leaders and from farmers in Cuba and other countries. The most productive component of Cuban agriculture are the small farmers, said ANAP Vice President Félix González Viego at the opening of the event. More than 100,000 small farmers won title to the land they worked with the triumph of the Cuban Revolution in 1959.

Several U.S. farmers participated in the conference, including Randy Jasper, a grain farmer and member of Family Farm Defenders in Wisconsin; Mimi Arnstein, whose farm is part of a vegetable cooperative in Marshfield, Vt.; and Ben Burkett, a Mississippi vegetable farmer who is active in the Federation of Southern Cooperatives and president of the National Family Farm Coalition.
 
 
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