660. The Paradox of Cuban Agriculture

By Miguel A. Altieri and Fernando R. Funes-Monzote, Monthly Review, January 8, 2012

When Cuba faced the shock of lost trade relations with the Soviet Bloc in the early 1990s, food production initially collapsed due to the loss of imported fertilizers, pesticides, tractors, parts, and petroleum. The situation was so bad that Cuba posted the worst growth in per capita food production in all of Latin America and the Caribbean. But the island rapidly re-oriented its agriculture to depend less on imported synthetic chemical inputs, and became a world-class case of ecological agriculture.1 This was such a successful turnaround that Cuba rebounded to show the best food production performance in Latin America and the Caribbean over the following period, a remarkable annual growth rate of 4.2 percent per capita from 1996 through 2005, a period in which the regional average was 0 percent.2

Much of the production rebound was due to the adoption since the early 1990s of a range of agrarian decentralization policies that encouraged forms of production, both individual as well as cooperative—Basic Units of Cooperative Production (UBPC) and Credit and Service Cooperatives (CCS). Moreover, recently the Ministry of Agriculture announced the dismantling of all “inefficient State companies” as well as support for creating 2,600 new small urban and suburban farms, and the distribution of the use rights (in usufruct) to the majority of estimated 3 million hectares of unused State lands. Under these regulations, decisions on resource use and strategies for food production and commercialization will be made at the municipal level, while the central government and state companies will support farmers by distributing necessary inputs and services.3 Through the mid-1990s some 78,000 farms were given in usufruct to individuals and legal entities. More than 100,000 farms have now been distributed, covering more than 1 million hectares in total. These new farmers are associated with the CCS following the campesino production model. The government is busy figuring out how to accelerate the processing of an unprecedented number of land requests.4

The land redistribution program has been supported by solid research- extension systems that have played key roles in the expansion of organic and urban agriculture and the massive artisanal production and deployment of biological inputs for soil and pest management. The opening of local agricultural markets and the existence of strong grassroots organisations supporting farmers—for example, the National Association of Small Scale Farmers (ANAP, Asociación Nacional de Agricultores Pequeños), the Cuban Association of Animal Production (ACPA, Asociación Cubana de Producción Animal), and the Cuban Association of Agricultural and Forestry Technicians (ACTAF, Asociación Cubana de Técnicos Agrícolas y Forestales)—also contributed to this achievement.

But perhaps the most important changes that led to the recovery of food sovereignty in Cuba occurred in the peasant sector which in 2006, controlling only 25 percent of the agricultural land, produced over 65 percent of the country’s food.5 Most peasants belong to the ANAP and almost all of them belong to cooperatives. The production of vegetables typically produced by peasants fell drastically between 1988 to 1994, but by 2007 had rebounded to well over 1988 levels (see Table 1). This production increase came despite using 72 percent fewer agricultural chemicals in 2007 than in 1988. Similar patterns can be seen for other peasant crops like beans, roots, and tubers.

Cuba’s achievements in urban agriculture are truly remarkable—there are 383,000 urban farms, covering 50,000 hectares of otherwise unused land and producing more than 1.5 million tons of vegetables with top urban farms reaching a yield of 20 kg/m2 per year of edible plant material using no synthetic chemicals—equivalent to a hundred tons per hectare. Urban farms supply 70 percent or more of all the fresh vegetables consumed in cities such as Havana and Villa Clara.

Table 1. Changes in Crop Production and Agrochemical Use

Crop	Percent production change		Percent change in agrochemical use
	1988 to 1994	1988 to 2007	1988 to 2007
General vegetables	-65	+145	-72
Beans	-77	+351	-55
Roots and tubers	-42	+145	-85

Source: Peter Rosset, Braulio Machín-Sosa, Adilén M. Roque-Jaime, and Dana R. Avila-Lozano, “The Campesino-to-Campesino Agroecology Movement of ANAP in Cuba,” Journal of Peasant Studies 38 (2011): 161-91.

All over the world, and especially in Latin America, the island’s agroecological production levels and the associated research efforts along with innovative farmer organizational schemes have been observed with great interest. No other country in the world has achieved this level of success with a form of agriculture that uses the ecological services of biodiversity and reduces food miles, energy use, and effectively closes local production and consumption cycles. However, some people talk about the “Cuban agriculture paradox”: if agroecological advances in the country are so great, why does Cuba still import substantial amounts of food? If effective biological control methods are widely available and used, why is the government releasing transgenic plants such as Bt crops that produce their own pesticide using genes derived from bacteria?

An article written by Dennis Avery from the Center for Global Food Issues at the Hudson Institute, “Cubans Starve on Diet of Lies,” helped fuel the debate around the paradox. He stated:

The Cubans told the world they had heroically learned to feed themselves without fuel or farm chemicals after their Soviet subsidies collapsed in the early 1990s. They bragged about their “peasant cooperatives,” their biopesticides and organic fertilizers. They heralded their earthworm culture and the predator wasps they unleashed on destructive caterpillars. They boasted about the heroic ox teams they had trained to replace tractors. Organic activists all over the world swooned. Now, a senior Ministry of Agriculture official has admitted in the Cuban press that 84 percent of Cuba’s current food consumption is imported, according to our agricultural attaché in Havana. The organic success was all a lie.6

Avery has used this misinformation to promote a campaign discrediting authors who studied and informed about the heroic achievements of Cuban people in the agricultural field: he has accused these scientists of being communist liars.

The Truth About Food Imports in Cuba

Avery referred to statements of Magalys Calvo, then Vice Minister of the Economy and Planning Ministry, who said in February 2007 that 84 percent of items “in the basic food basket” at that time were imported. However, these percentages represent only the food that is distributed through regulated government channels by means of a ration card. Overall data show that Cuba’s food import dependency has been dropping for decades, despite brief upturns due to natural and human-made disasters. The best time series available on Cuban food import dependency (see Chart 1) shows that it actually declined between 1980 and 1997, aside from a spike in the early 1990s, when trade relations with the former Socialist Bloc collapsed.7

Chart 1. Cuba Food Import Dependency, 1980–1997

Source: José Alvarez, The Issue of Food Security in Cuba, University of Florida Extension Report FE483, downloaded July 20, 2011 from http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/pdffiles/FE/FE48300.pdf.

However, Chart 2 indicates a much more nuanced view of Cuba’s agricultural strengths and weaknesses after more than a decade of technological bias toward ecological farming techniques. Great successes have clearly been achieved in root crops (a staple of the Cuban diet), sugar and other sweeteners, vegetables, fruits, eggs, and seafood. Meat is an intermediate case, while large amounts of cooking oil, cereals, and legumes (principally rice and wheat for human consumption, and corn and soybeans for livestock) continue to be imported. The same is true for powdered milk, which does not appear on the graph. Total import dependency, however, is a mere 16 percent—ironically the exact inverse of the 84 percent figure cited by Avery. It is also important to mention that twenty-three other countries in the Latin American-Caribbean region are also net food importers.8

Chart 2. Import Dependence For Selected Foods, 2003

Source: Calculated from FAO Commodity Balances, Cuba, 2003, http://faostat.fao.org.

There is considerable debate concerning current food dependency in Cuba. Dependency rose in the 2000s as imports from the United States grew and hurricanes devastated its agriculture. After being hit by three especially destructive hurricanes in 2008, Cuba satisfied national needs by importing 55 percent of its total food, equivalent to approximately $2.8 billion. However, as the world food price crisis drives prices higher, the government has reemphasized food self-sufficiency. Regardless of whether food has been imported or produced within the country, it is important to recognize that Cuba has been generally able to adequately feed its people. According to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), Cuba’s average daily per capita dietary energy supply in 2007 (the last year available) was over 3,200 kcal, the highest of all Latin American and Caribbean nations.9

Different Models: Agroecology versus Industrial Agriculture

Under this new scenario the importance of contributions of ANAP peasants to reducing food imports should become strategic, but is it? Despite the indisputable advances of sustainable agriculture in Cuba and evidence of the effectiveness of alternatives to the monoculture model, interest persists among some leaders in high external input systems with sophisticated and expensive technological packages. With the pretext of “guaranteeing food security and reducing food imports,” these specific programs pursue “maximization” of crop and livestock production and insist on going back to monoculture methods—and therefore dependent on synthetic chemical inputs, large scale machinery, and irrigation—despite proven energy inefficiency and technological fragility. In fact, many resources are provided by international cooperation (i.e., from Venezuela) dedicated to “protect or boost agricultural areas” where a more intensive agriculture is practiced for crops like potatoes, rice, soybean, and vegetables.

These “protected” areas for large-scale, industrial-style agricultural production represent less than 10 percent of the cultivated land. Millions of dollars are invested in pivot irrigation systems, machinery, and other industrial agricultural technologies: a seductive model which increases short-term production but generates high long-term environmental and socioeconomic costs, while replicating a model that failed even before 1990.

Last year it was announced that the pesticide enterprise “Juan Rodríguez Gómez” in the municipality of Artemisa, Havana, will produce some 100,000 liters of the herbicide glyphosate in 2011.10 In early 2011 a Cuban TV News program informed the population about the Cubasoy project. The program, “Bienvenida la Soya,” reported that “it is possible to transform lands that over years were covered by marabú [a thorny invasive leguminous tree] with soybean monoculture in the south of the Ciego de Ávila province.” Supported by Brazilian credits and technology, the project covers more than 15,000 hectares of soybean grown in rotation with maize and aims at reaching 40,500 hectares in 2013, with a total of 544 center pivot irrigation systems installed by 2014. Soybean yields rank between 1.2 tons per hectare (1,100 lbs per acre) under rainfed conditions and up to 1.97 tons per hectare (1,700 lbs per acre) under irrigation. It is not clear if the soybean varieties used are transgenic, but the maize variety is the Cuban transgenic FR-Bt1. Ninety percent of machinery is imported from Brazil—“large tractors, direct seeding machines, and equipment for crop protection”—and considerable infrastructure investments have been made for irrigation, roads, technical support, processing, and transport.

The Debate Over Transgenic Crops

Cuba has invested millions in biotechnological research and development for agriculture through its Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (CIGB) and a network of institutions across the country. Cuban biotechnology is free from corporate control and intellectual property-right regimes that exist in other countries. Cuban biotechnologists affirm that their biosafety system sets strict biological and environmental security norms. Given this autonomy and advantages biotechnological innovations could efficiently be applied to solve problems such as viral crop diseases or drought tolerance for which agroecological solutions are not yet available. In 2009 the CIGB planted in Yagüajay, Sancti Spiritus, three hectares of genetically modified corn (transgenic corn FR-Bt1) on an experimental basis. This variety is supposed to suppress populations of the damaging larval stage of the “palomilla del maíz” moth (Spodoptera frugiperda, also known as the fall armyworm). By 2009 a total of 6,000 hectares were planted with the transgenic (also referred to as genetically modified, or GM) variety across several provinces. From an agroecological perspective it is perplexing that the first transgenic variety to be tested in Cuba is Bt corn, given that in the island there are so many biological control alternatives to regulate lepidopteran pests. The diversity of local maize varieties include some that exhibit moderate-to-high levels of pest resistance, offering significant opportunities to increase yields with conventional plant breeding and known agroecological management strategies. Many centers for multiplication of insect parasites and pathogens (CREEs, Centros de Reproducción de Entomófagos y Entomopatógenos) produce Bacillus thuringiensis (a microbial insecticide) and Trichogramma (small wasps), both highly effective against moths such as the palomilla. In addition, mixing corn with other crops such as beans or sweet potatoes in polycultures produces significantly less pest attack than maize grown in monocultures. This also increases the land equivalent ratio (growing more total crops in a given area of land) and protects the soil.

When transgenic Bt maize was planted in 2008 as a test crop, researchers and farmers from the agroecological movement expressed concern. Several people warned that the release of transgenic crops endangered agrobiodiversity and contradicted the government’s own agricultural production plans by diverting the focus from agroecological farming that had been strategically adopted as a policy in Cuba. Others felt that biotechnology was geared towards the interests of the multinational corporations and the market. Taking into account its potential environmental and public health risks, it would be better for Cuba to continue emphasizing agroecological alternatives that have proven to be safe and have allowed the country to produce food under difficult economic and climatic circumstances.

The main demonstrated advantage of GM crops has been to simplify the farming process, allowing farmers to work more land. GM crops that resist herbicides (such as “Roundup Ready” corn and soybeans) and that produce their own insecticide (such as Bt corn) generally do not yield any more than comparable non-GM crops. However, using these GM crops along with higher levels of mechanization (especially larger tractors) have now made it possible for the size of a family corn and soybean farm in the U.S. Midwest to increase from around 240 hectares (600 acres) to around 800 hectares (2,000 acres).

In September 2010 a meeting of experts concerned about transgenic crops was convened with board and staff members from the National Center for Biological Security and the Office for Environmental Regulation and Nuclear Security (Centro Nacional de Seguridad Biológica and the Oficina de Regulación Ambiental y Seguridad Nuclear), institutions entrusted with licensing GM crops. The experts issued a statement calling for a moratorium on GM crops until more information was available and society has a chance to debate the environmental and health effects of the technology. However, until now there has been no response to this request. One positive outcome of the year-long debate on the inconsistency of planting FR-Bt1 transgenic corn in Cuba was the open recognition by the authorities of the potential devastating consequences of GM crops for the small farmer sector. Although it appears that the use of transgenic corn will be limited exclusively to the areas of Cubasoy and other conventional areas under strict supervision, this effort is highly questionable.11

The Paradox’s Outcome—What Does the Future Hold?

The instability in international markets and the increase in food prices in a country somewhat dependent on food imports threatens national sovereignty. This reality has prompted high officials to make declarations emphasizing the need to prioritize food production based on locally available resources.12 It is in fact paradoxical that, to achieve food security in a period of economic growth, most of the resources are dedicated to importing foods or promoting industrial agriculture schemes instead of stimulating local production by peasants. There is a cyclical return to support conventional agriculture by policy makers when the financial situation improves, while sustainable approaches and agroecology, considered as “alternatives,” are only supported under scenarios of economic scarcity. This cyclical mindset strongly undermines the advances achieved with agroecology and organic farming since the economic collapse in 1990.

Cuban agriculture currently experiences two extreme food-production models: an intensive model with high inputs, and another, beginning at the onset of the special period, oriented towards agroecology and based on low inputs. The experience accumulated from agroecological initiatives in thousands of small-and-medium scale farms constitutes a valuable starting point in the definition of national policies to support sustainable agriculture, thus rupturing with a monoculture model prevalent for almost four hundred years. In addition to Cuba being the only country in the world that was able to recover its food production by adopting agroecological approaches under extreme economic difficulties, the island exhibits several characteristics that serve as fundamental pillars to scale up agroecology to unprecedented levels:

Cuba represents 2 percent of the Latin American population but has 11 percent of the scientists in the region. There are about 140,000 high-level professionals and medium-level technicians, dozens of research centres, agrarian universities and their networks, government institutions such as the Ministry of Agriculture, scientific organizations supporting farmers (i.e. ACTAF), and farmers organizations such as ANAP.

Cuba has sufficient land to produce enough food with agroecological methods to satisfy the nutritional needs of its eleven million inhabitants.13 Despite soil erosion, deforestation, and loss of biodiversity during the past fifty years—as well as during the previous four centuries of extractive agriculture—the country’s conditions remain exceptionally favorable for agriculture. Cuba has six million hectares of fairly level land and another million gently sloping hectares that can be used for cropping. More than half of this land remains uncultivated, and the productivity of both land and labor, as well as the efficiency of resource use, in the rest of this farm area are still low. If all the peasant farms (controlling 25 percent of land) and all the UBPC (controlling 42 percent of land) adopted diversified agroecological designs, Cuba would be able to produce enough to feed its population, supply food to the tourist industry, and even export some food to help generate foreign currency. All this production would be supplemented with urban agriculture, which is already reaching significant levels of production.

About one third of all peasant families, some 110,000 families, have joined ANAP within its Farmer to Farmer Agroecological Movement (MACAC, Movimiento Agroecológico Campesino a Campesino). It uses participatory methods based on local peasant needs and allows for the socialization of the rich pool of family and community agricultural knowledge that is linked to their specific historical conditions and identities. By exchanging innovations among themselves, peasants have been able to make dramatic strides in food production relative to the conventional sector, while preserving agrobiodiversity and using much lower amounts of agrochemicals.

Observations of agricultural performance after extreme climatic events in the last two decades have revealed the resiliency of peasant farms to climate disasters. Forty days after Hurricane Ike hit Cuba in 2008, researchers conducted a farm survey in the provinces of Holguin and Las Tunas and found that diversified farms exhibited losses of 50 percent compared to 90 to 100 percent in neighboring farms growing monocultures. Likewise agroecologically managed farms showed a faster productive recovery (80 to 90 percent forty days after the hurricane) than monoculture farms.14 These evaluations emphasize the importance of enhancing plant diversity and complexity in farming systems to reduce vulnerability to extreme climatic events, a strategy entrenched among Cuban peasants.

Most of the production efforts have been oriented towards reaching food sovereignty, defined as the right of everyone to have access to safe, nutritious, and culturally appropriate food in sufficient quantity and quality to sustain a healthy life with full human dignity. However, given the expected increase in the cost of fuel and inputs, the Cuban agroecological strategy also aims at enhancing two other types of sovereignties. Energy sovereignty is the right for all people to have access to sufficient energy within ecological limits from appropriate sustainable sources for a dignified life. Technological sovereignty refers to the capacity to achieve food and energy sovereignty by nurturing the environmental services derived from existing agrobiodiversity and using locally available resources.

Elements of the three sovereignties—food, energy, and technology—can be found in hundreds of small farms, where farmers are producing 70–100 percent of the necessary food for their family consumption while producing surpluses sold to the market, allowing them to obtain income (for example, Finca del Medio, CCS Reinerio Reina in Sancti Spiritus; Plácido farm, CCS José Machado; Cayo Piedra, in Matanzas, belonging to CCS José Martí; and San José farm, CCS Dionisio San Román in Cienfuegos). These levels of productivity are obtained using local technologies such as worm composting and reproduction of beneficial native microorganisms together with diversified production systems such as polycultures, rotations, animal integration into crop farms, and agroforestry. Many farmers are also using integrated food/energy systems and generate their own sources of energy using human and animal labor, biogas, and windmills, in addition to producing biofuel crops such as jatrophaintercropped with cassava.15

Conclusions

A rich knowledge of agroecology science and practice exists in Cuba, the result of accumulated experiences promoted by researchers, professors, technicians, and farmers supported by ACTAF, ACPA, and ANAP. This legacy is based on the experiences within rural communities that contain successful “agroecological lighthouses” from which principles have radiated out to help build the basis of an agricultural strategy that promotes efficiency, diversity, synergy, and resiliency. By capitalizing on the potential of agroecology, Cuba has been able to reach high levels of production using low amounts of energy and external inputs, with returns to investment on research several times higher than those derived from industrial and biotechnological approaches that require major equipment, fuel, and sophisticated laboratories.

The political will expressed in the writings and discourses of high officials about the need to prioritize agricultural self-sufficiency must translate into concrete support for the promotion of productive and energy-efficient initiatives in order to reach the three sovereignties at the local (municipal) level, a fundamental requirement to sustain a planet in crisis.

By creating more opportunities for strategic alliances between ANAP, ACPA, ACTAF, and research centers, many pilot projects could be launched in key municipalities, testing different agroecological technologies that promote the three sovereignties, as adapted to each region’s special environmental and socioeconomic conditions. These initiatives should adopt the farmer-to-farmer methodology that transcends top-down research and extension paradigms, allowing farmers and researchers to learn and innovate collectively. The integration of university professors and students in such experimentation and evaluation processes would enhance scientific knowledge for the conversion to an ecologically based agriculture. It would also help improve agroecological theory, which would in turn benefit the training of future generations of professionals, technicians, and farmers.

The agroecological movement constantly urges those Cuban policy makers with a conventional, Green Revolution, industrial farming mindset to consider the reality of a small island nation facing an embargo and potentially devastating hurricanes. Given these realities, embracing agroecological approaches and methods throughout the country’s agriculture can help Cuba achieve food sovereignty while maintaining its political autonomy.

Notes

1.               ↩ Peter Rosset and Medea Benjamin, eds., The Greening of the Revolution (Ocean Press: Melbourne, Australia, 1994); Fernando Funes, et. al., eds., Sustainable Agriculture and Resistance (Oakland: Food First Books, 2002); Braulio Machín-Sosa, et. al., Revolución Agroecológica (ANAP: La Habana, 2010).

2.              ↩ Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), The State of Food and Agriculture 2006 (Rome: FAO, 2006), http://fao.org.

3.              ↩ MINAG (Ministerio de la Agricultura), Informe del Ministerio de la Agricultura a la Comisión Agroalimentaria de la Asamblea Nacional, May 14, 2008 (MINAG: Havana, Cuba, 2008).

4.              ↩ Ana Margarita González, “Tenemos que dar saltos cualitativos,” Interview with Orlando Lugo Fonte, Trabajadores, June 22, 2009, 6.

5.              ↩ Raisa Pagés, “Necesarios cambios en relaciones con el sector cooperativo-campesino,” Granma, December 18, 2006, 3.

6.              ↩ Dennis T. Avery, “Cubans Starve on Diet of Lies,” April 2, 2009, http://cgfi.org.

7.              ↩ Fernando Funes, Miguel A. Altieri, and Peter Rosset, “The Avery Diet: The Hudson’s Institute Misinformation Campaign Against Cuban Agriculture,” May 2009, http://globalalternatives.org.

8.              ↩ FAO, Ibid.

9.              ↩ FAOSTAT Food Supply Database, http://faostat.fao.org, accessed July 28, 2011.

10.            ↩ René Montalván, “Plaguicidas de factura nacional,” El Habanero, November 23, 2010, 4.

11.             ↩ Fernando Funes-Monzote and Eduardo F. Freyre Roach, eds., Transgénicos ¿Qué se gana? ¿Qué se pierde? Textos para un debate en Cuba (Havana: Publicaciones Acuario, 2009), http://landaction.org.

12.            ↩ Raúl Castro, “Mientras mayores sean las dificultades, más exigencia, disciplina y unidad se requieren,” Granma, February 25, 2008, 4–6.

13.            ↩ Fernando Funes-Monzote, Farming Like We’re Here to Stay, PhD dissertation, Wageningen University, Netherlands, 2008.

14.            ↩ Braulio Machin-Sosa, et. al., Revolución Agroecológica: el Movimiento de Campesino a Campesino de la ANAP en Cuba (ANAP: La Habana, 2010).

15.            ↩ Fernando Funes-Monzote, et. al., “Evaluación inicial de sistemas integrados para la producción de alimentos y energía en Cuba,” Pastos y Forrajes (forthcoming, 2011).

Miguel A. Altieri (agroeco3 [at] berkeley.edu) is Profesor of Agroecology at the University of California, Berkeley and President of the Latin American Scientific Society of Agroecology (SOCLA). He is the author of more than 250 journal articles and twelve books. Fernando R. Funes-Monzote (mgahonam [at] enet.cu) is currently a researcher at the Experimental Station Indio Hatuey, University of Matanzas, Cuba. He is one of the founding members of the Cuban Association of Organic Agriculture.

659. Ecocide: Lethal Honeybee Epidemic Nearing a ‘Critical Point’

States reporting honey bee Colony Collapse Disorder (in red)

By Claire Thomson, Grist, January 13, 2012

Anyone who's been stung by a bee knows they can inflict an outsized pain for such tiny insects. It makes a strange kind of sense, then, that their demise would create an outsized problem for the food system by placing the more than 70 crops they pollinate -- from almonds to apples to blueberries -- in peril.

Although news about Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) has died down, commercial beekeepers have seen average population losses of about 30 percent each year since 2006, said Paul Towers, of the Pesticide Action Network. Towers was one of the organizers of a conference that brought together beekeepers and environmental groups this week to tackle the challenges facing the beekeeping industry and the agricultural economy by proxy.

"We are inching our way toward a critical tipping point," said Steve Ellis, secretary of the National Honey Bee Advisory Board (NHBAB) and a beekeeper for 35 years. Last year he had so many abnormal bee die-offs that he'll qualify for disaster relief from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).

In addition to continued reports of CCD -- a still somewhat mysterious phenomenon in which entire bee colonies literally disappear, alien-abduction style, leaving not even their dead bodies behind -- bee populations are suffering poor health in general, and experiencing shorter life spans and diminished vitality. And while parasites, pathogens, and habitat loss can deal blows to bee health, research increasingly points to pesticides as the primary culprit.

"In the industry we believe pesticides play an important role in what's going on," said Dave Hackenberg, co-chair of the NHBAB and a beekeeper in Pennsylvania.

Of particular concern is a group of pesticides, chemically similar to nicotine, called neonicotinoids (neonics for short), and one in particular called clothianidin. Instead of being sprayed, neonics are used to treat seeds, so that they're absorbed by the plant's vascular system, and then end up attacking the central nervous systems of bees that come to collect pollen. Virtually all of today's genetically engineered Bt corn is treated with neonics. The chemical industry alleges that bees don't like to collect corn pollen, but new research shows that not only do bees indeed forage in corn, but they also have multiple other routes of exposure to neonics.

The Purdue University study, published in the journal PLoS ONE, found high levels of clothianidin in planter exhaust spewed during the spring sowing of treated maize seed. It also found neonics in the soil of unplanted fields nearby those planted with Bt corn, on dandelions growing near those fields, in dead bees found near hive entrances, and in pollen stored in the hives.

Evidence already pointed to the presence of neonic-contaminated pollen as a factor in CCD. As Hackenberg explained, "The insects start taking [the pesticide] home, and it contaminates everywhere the insect came from." These new revelations about the pervasiveness of neonics in bees' habitats only strengthen the case against using the insecticides.

The irony, of course, is that farmers use these chemicals to protect their crops from destructive insects, but in so doing, they harm other insects essential to their crops' production -- a catch-22 that Hackenberg said speaks to the fact that "we have become a nation driven by the chemical industry." In addition to beekeeping, he owns two farms, and even when crop analysts recommend spraying pesticides on his crops to kill an aphid population, for example, he knows that "if I spray, I'm going to kill all the beneficial insects." But most farmers, lacking Hackenberg's awareness of bee populations, follow the advice of the crop adviser -- who, these days, is likely to be paid by the chemical industry, rather than by a state university or another independent entity.

Beekeepers have already teamed up with groups representing the almond and blueberry industries -- both of which depend on honey bee pollination -- to tackle the need for education among farmers. "A lot of [farm groups] are recognizing that we need more resources devoted to pollinator protection," Ellis said. "We need that same level of commitment on a national basis, from our USDA and EPA and the agricultural chemical industry."

Unfortunately, it was the EPA itself that green-lit clothianidin and other neonics for commercial use, despite its own scientists' clear warnings about the chemicals' effects on bees and other pollinators. That doesn't bode well for the chances of getting neonics off the market now, even in light of the Purdue study's findings.

"The agency has, in most cases, sided with pesticide manufacturers and worked to fast-track the approval of new products, and failed in cases when there's clear evidence of harm to take those products off the market," Towers said.

Since this is an election year -- a time when no one wants to make Big Ag (and its money) mad -- beekeepers may have to suffer another season of losses before there's any hope of action on the EPA's part. But when one out of every three bites of food on Americans' plates results directly from honey bee pollination, there's no question that the fate of these insects will determine our own as eaters.

Ellis, for his part, thinks that figuring out a way to solve the bee crisis could be a catalyst for larger reform within our agriculture system. "If we can protect that pollinator base, it's going to have ripple effects ... for wildlife, for human health," he said. "It will bring up subjects that need to be looked at, of groundwater and surface water -- all the connected subjects associated [with] chemical use and agriculture."

658. Labor Practices of Apple's Suppliers Come to Light

By Nick Wingfield and Charles Duhigg, The New York Times, January 13, 2012

Apple released a list of its major suppliers for the first time on Friday, bringing the company up to par with other big American corporations, including Hewlett-Packard, Intel and Nike, which have released similar lists.

Related

The list accompanied a report detailing troubling practices inside many of the technology giant’s suppliers. Apple said audits revealed that 93 supplier facilities had records indicating that over half of workers exceeded a 60-hour weekly working limit. Apple said 108 facilities did not pay proper overtime as required by law. In 15 facilities, Apple found foreign contract workers who had paid excessive recruitment fees to labor agencies.

And though Apple said it mandated changes at those suppliers, and some showed improvements, in aggregate, many types of lapses remained at general levels that have persisted for years.

Labor rights groups, journalists and academics have long asked Apple to reveal the names of its suppliers. While other companies have published the names of firms providing parts and services, Apple has resisted, with some inside the company citing the firm’s culture of secrecy.

Judy Gearhart, executive director of the International Labor Rights Forum, an advocacy group for workers’ rights, was disappointed Apple did not reveal the location of the suppliers on its list, complicating outside efforts to monitor the progress at the factories. Some plants on the list are relatively unknown, with Web sites that do not list where facilities are situated.

“It’s a bit of a half-step really to say, ‘Here are the names of the factories, go look through a haystack,’ ” Ms. Gearhart said. “But it’s a start.”

Steve Dowling, an Apple spokesman, declined to comment beyond the report.

The calls for Apple to disclose suppliers became particularly acute after a series of deaths and accidents in recent years.

In the last two years at companies supplying services to Apple, 137 employees were seriously injured after cleaning iPad screens with n-hexane, a toxic chemical that can cause nerve damage and paralysis; numerous workers have committed suicide, or fallen or jumped from buildings in a manner suggesting suicide attempts; and in two separate explosions caused by dust from polishing iPad cases, four were killed and 77 injured.

Apple, based in Cupertino, Calif., posted the supplier list on its Web site on Friday as part of something it calls its supplier responsibility progress report, a document typically published in February. Apple provides aggregate statistics of audits examining labor, discrimination, worker health and safety, environmental and other practices.

The list consists of 156 companies, accounting for 97 percent of what Apple says it pays to its suppliers. Apple’s tally of its suppliers includes many big-name companies like Intel and Nvidia, both makers of chips for Apple’s Macintosh computers, along with other parts makers like Samsung Electronics, Toshiba and Panasonic. The list also includes less recognized companies like Zeniya Aluminum Engineering, Jin Li Mould Manufacturing and Unisteel Technology.

But the list excludes many of the secondary suppliers — companies that provide parts to firms that directly contract with Apple. For instance, though the American glassmaker Corning has manufactured the strengthened glass in iPhones, it does not appear on the list because it technically does not contract with Apple, but with an intermediary that finishes the glass before it is delivered to an assembly factory.

Apple said 229 audits were conducted as part of this year’s supplier responsibility report, an 80 percent increase over the number the year before. The company said the facilities where repeat audits were done had shown fewer violations.

In an e-mail to Apple employees, Timothy D. Cook, the chief executive, said Apple had used its influence to improve living conditions for the people who make its products, including employee housing. “To meet our requirements, many suppliers have renovated their dorms or built new ones altogether,” he wrote.

This is the sixth such report Apple has issued. The company began conducting audits and publishing reports after news articles in 2006 showed poor working conditions at Foxconn, a Chinese manufacturer of Apple products.

Apple said in the report that it recently became the first technology company to join the Fair Labor Association, a nonprofit group that aims to improve conditions in factories around the world. Apple said it would allow the association’s auditing team to gauge the performance of Apple’s suppliers against a code of conduct and publish the results.

“We welcome Apple’s commitment to greater transparency and independent oversight, and we hope its participation will set a new standard for the electronics industry,” Auret van Heerden, the association’s president, said in a statement.

Jeff Ballinger, a global labor activist, said he was skeptical that transparency alone would change the behavior of Apple’s suppliers, unless Apple was willing to pay more. “They can say forced overtime is a big problem, can you give Saturday afternoons off?” he said, adding that the factories’ “response is going to be raise the prices you give us.”

“That they don’t want to do,” he said of Apple.

657. Give Guantánamo Back to Cuba

Guantánamo Bay Naval Station in Cuba

By Jonathan M. Hansen, The New York Times, January 10, 2012

IN the 10 years since the Guantánamo detention camp opened, the anguished debate over whether to shutter the facility — or make it permanent — has obscured a deeper failure that dates back more than a century and implicates all Americans: namely, our continued occupation of Guantánamo itself. It is past time to return this imperialist enclave to Cuba.

From the moment the United States government forced Cuba to lease the Guantánamo Bay naval base to us, in June 1901, the American presence there has been more than a thorn in Cuba’s side. It has served to remind the world of America’s long history of interventionist militarism. Few gestures would have as salutary an effect on the stultifying impasse in American-Cuban relations as handing over this coveted piece of land.

The circumstances by which the United States came to occupy Guantánamo are as troubling as its past decade of activity there. In April 1898, American forces intervened in Cuba’s three-year-old struggle for independence when it was all but won, thus transforming the Cuban War of Independence into what Americans are still wont to call the Spanish-American War. American officials then excluded the Cuban Army from the armistice and denied Cuba a seat at the Paris peace conference. “There is so much natural anger and grief throughout the island,” the Cuban general Máximo Gómez remarked in January 1899, after the peace treaty was signed, “that the people haven’t really been able to celebrate the triumph of the end of their former rulers’ power.”

Curiously, the United States’ declaration of war on Spain included the assurance that America did not seek “sovereignty, jurisdiction, or control” over Cuba and intended “to leave the government and control of the island to its people.”

But after the war, strategic imperatives took precedence over Cuban independence. The United States wanted dominion over Cuba, along with naval bases from which to exercise it.

Enter Gen. Leonard Wood, whom President William McKinley had named military governor of Cuba, bearing provisions that became known as the Platt Amendment. Two were particularly odious: one guaranteed the United States the right to intervene at will in Cuban affairs; the other provided for the sale or lease of naval stations. Juan Gualberto Gómez, a leading delegate to the Cuban Constitutional Convention, said the amendment would render Cubans “a vassal people.” Foreshadowing the Cuban Missile Crisis, he presciently warned that foreign bases on Cuban soil would only draw Cuba “into conflict not of our own making and in which we have no stake.”

But it was an offer Cuba could not refuse, as Wood informed the delegates. The alternative to the amendment was continued occupation. The Cubans got the message. “There is, of course, little or no real independence left Cuba under the Platt Amendment,” Wood remarked to McKinley’s successor, Theodore Roosevelt, in October 1901, soon after the Platt Amendment was incorporated into the Cuban Constitution. “The more sensible Cubans realize this and feel that the only consistent thing now is to seek annexation.”

But with Platt in place, who needed annexation? Over the next two decades, the United States repeatedly dispatched Marines based at Guantánamo to protect its interests in Cuba and block land redistribution. Between 1900 and 1920, some 44,000 Americans flocked to Cuba, boosting capital investment on the island to just over $1 billion from roughly $80 million and prompting one journalist to remark that “little by little, the whole island is passing into the hands of American citizens.”

How did this look from Cuba’s perspective? Well, imagine that at the end of the American Revolution the French had decided to remain here. Imagine that the French had refused to allow Washington and his army to attend the armistice at Yorktown. Imagine that they had denied the Continental Congress a seat at the Treaty of Paris, prohibited expropriation of Tory property, occupied New York Harbor, dispatched troops to quash Shays’ and other rebellions and then immigrated to the colonies in droves, snatching up the most valuable land.

Such is the context in which the United States came to occupy Guantánamo. It is a history excluded from American textbooks and neglected in the debates over terrorism, international law and the reach of executive power. But it is a history known in Cuba (where it motivated the 1959 revolution) and throughout Latin America. It explains why Guantánamo remains a glaring symbol of hypocrisy around the world. We need not even speak of the last decade.

If President Obama were to acknowledge this history and initiate the process of returning Guantánamo to Cuba, he could begin to put the mistakes of the last 10 years behind us, not to mention fulfill a campaign pledge. (Given Congressional intransigence, there might be no better way to close the detention camp than to turn over the rest of the naval base along with it.) It would rectify an age-old grievance and lay the groundwork for new relations with Cuba and other countries in the Western Hemisphere and around the globe. Finally, it would send an unmistakable message that integrity, self-scrutiny and candor are not evidence of weakness, but indispensable attributes of leadership in an ever changing world. Surely there would be no fitter way to observe today’s grim anniversary than to stand up for the principles Guantánamo has undermined for over a century.

Jonathan M. Hansen, a lecturer in social studies at Harvard, is the author of “Guantánamo: An American History.”

656. In Cuba's Hinterland a Business Is Born

The Magno Restaurant in Guaimaro

By Marc Frank, Reuters, January 10, 2012

Guaimaro, just one of many small poor and dusty towns along Cuba's sparsely traveled central highway, is best known as the spot where the island's first constitution was signed during the independence war with Spain.

These days the talk of the town is about a different sort of independence in state-dominated Cuba - the privately owned Magno restaurant, the most luxurious place in Guaimaro. Its owner Tomas Mayedo Fernandez is a local boy who once did jail time for involuntary manslaughter but now, in just over a year as an entrepreneur, is a big success.

The eatery is one of more than 1,000 home-based restaurants, or paladares, that have opened on the Communist-run island since restrictions on small private businesses were loosened in late 2010, as part of a broader reform of the Soviet-style economy undertaken by President Raul Castro.

A meal at the Magno will cost you the equivalent of a few dollars for a beer and sandwich to $10 or more for steak and lobster, in a land where the average wage is less than $20 per month.

There are just two other private eateries and a few shabby looking state-run restaurants in Guaimaro, located 400 miles east of Havana. But they cater more to the local population rather than passersby and do not boast air-conditioning, lobster, shrimp, beef, whiskey and aged rum.

"I didn't know anything about running a restaurant, but I liked the idea of going into business and so when the law changed I began, little by little," said Mayedo, a strapping young man and son of a cattle rancher in his mid-30s.

Mayedo lived in the second story of the once-crumbling, century-old building. He sold clothing from his living room to make ends meet and looked down on the ruins of the empty store front and big back yard the neighbors had turned into a garbage dump.

SEEING THE POTENTIAL

The place nevertheless had potential because it fronted the central highway, giving it access to a larger customer base than just the small town, he decided.

"We were already working to clean the place up before the law changed," Mayedo said recently, taking time off from his chats with arriving suppliers and his pacing back and forth with mobile phone in hand.

He began with a small cafeteria, but then on December 10, 2010, he opened the restaurant beside it. His plans did not stop there.

"We also have a jewelry repair shop and in two or three years I want to build a place in the back to rent out rooms," he said.

Like the rest of Cuba, many of Guaimaro's residents have family living abroad, especially in Florida, and as luck would have it, President Barack Obama lifted restrictions on Cuban Americans visiting their homeland just a few months before the Magno opened for business.

Over the recent holidays the town - where legs, bicycles and horse-drawn buggies are the main form of transportation - was dotted with rental cars, many of them driven by visiting Cuban Americans who wanted to treat their relatives and friends to a nice meal while out on the town.

There was only one place to go - the Magno, which has become a sort of destination restaurant that is well known in the area.

"December was by far the best month we have had," Mayedo said.

His wife Yaima Lopez helps run the Magno, while his aunt, a retired state economist, takes care of the books. Two cousins, with some cash earned working in Angola, where thousands of Cubans work as doctors, construction workers and teachers, lent him the seed money.

"I'm paying them back little by little, but they don't pressure me," he said.

The hardest times were when Mayedo waited for his clientele to build up and worried he might go bankrupt.

"Like all businesses the first year or two are the most difficult. And this is the countryside, not the capital where there is more demand. Here we depend on the people who pass by on the highway," he said.

THE TAX MAN COMETH

As his business has grown, Mayedo has added eight full-time employees to help operate it.

The biggest challenge has been training a workforce that is disciplined and pays attention to details, he said.

Mayedo said he has had no serious problems with the government, is grateful for the reforms underway and believes they are here to stay.

"I thank them for giving us the opportunity to demonstrate to ourselves that we are capable of doing this well," he said.

"No state can subsidize an entire population, it is impossible. Furthermore, we provide jobs, pay taxes and help the economy in a big way."

Mayedo doubted he would become a millionaire any time soon because, despite the reforms, there are still limits.

"The system is designed to allow us to keep living, not become rich. But yes, my life will keep improving," he said.

In a land where everyone worked for the state and there was no income tax until recently, one is now being levied on hundreds of thousands of small businesses and farms that have appeared due to Raul Castro's reforms.

Mayedo said his aunt was preparing his first income tax return even as he spoke.

Now that was something to worry about at a sliding scale of up to 50 percent of earnings, Mayedo admitted, but better to pay 50 percent of earnings than no tax on no earnings at all, he said with a shrug.