Cuban farmer feeds hunger for better way of life

[El Presidente]

 

Good news story. 

 

Cuban farmer feeds hunger for better way of life

https://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/os-ne-cuba-organic-small-farmer-20190710-s6qtz2enxfdvthynmuy2f3lwau-story.html

By KEVIN SPEAR

 

JUL 10, 2019 | 5:30 AM

  

 

Fernando Funes Monzote founded his Finca Marta farm west of Havana nearly eight years ago. The agricultural scientist hopes that his sustainable farming methods serve as a model for a better Cuba. (Kevin Spear / Orlando Sentinel)

 

HAVANA -- In a slow rebound from Cuba’s ruinous era of sugarcane agriculture, farmers are approaching their red-dirt fields with an appreciation for the artisanal, organic and small.

“This is Chinese spinach,” said Fernando Funes Monzote, smiling at the effect on visitors when shown endives, chard, kale, escarole and radishes, all saturated with sharp and subtle colors from a larger artwork, his farm. “You can see the quality,” he said, adding oregano, rosemary and anise flowers.

 

Funes founded his farm, Finca Marta, nearly eight years ago with a pick, shovel and wheelbarrow on a 20-acre rise. The tract offers a view of Havana’s skyline 20 miles to the east and catches breezes off the Straits of Florida 3 miles to the north.

Fernando Funes Monzote's Finca Marta farm west of Havana grows dozens of vegetables on terraced beds under shade cloth. (Kevin Spear / Orlando Sentinel)

Funes, 48, hopes to satisfy two appetites, the kind served by a fork and the sort with deeper pangs.nt by  

The agriculture scientist, community organizer and international speaker, whose hand dexterity is untroubled by an ever-present cigar and who can slip in and out of muddy boots with ease, wants to feed a nation’s hunger for a better life.

“My dream is to transform the situation for many people, to improve their lives and to live better here in Cuba,” Funes said.

Cuba historically monopolized its farmland with sugarcane, employing the Soviets’ big tractors and heavy use of chemicals. Farmers became technicians disassociated from concern for soil, water and people, Funes said.

Stunted in its agricultural maturity and abilities, the nation of 12 million residents has had to import the vast majority of its food -- much of it canned and processed.

Fernando Funes Monzote's Finca Marta farm west of Havana nearly depends on a well dug through 50 feet of rock. (Kevin Spear / Orlando Sentinel)

At Finca Marta, fresh produce is nurtured in an amphitheater of neatly terraced beds. The beds are covered by an enormous spread of shade cloth, deflecting harsher sun and rain. The effect is of a cool, lush garden – a really big one.

Funes’ farm has delivered 60 kinds of produce from arugula to zucchini in a battered Russian sedan – gutted and turned into a mini delivery van – to Havana restaurants for the past six years on Tuesdays and Fridays.

Chefs buy every last leaf, fruit, vegetable and spice.

That in itself is a wonder in a nation that destroys much of its food crop through inept distribution.

“What we produce, we sell,” Funes said. “There are no losses.”

Diners consuming his produce typically are not Cubans, whose average salary is $42 a month. A salad of Finca Marta greens, or a craft cocktail garnished with the farm’s herbs, each costs about $10 at El del Frente, an enlivened, rooftop restaurant in the older, touristy part of Havana.

“When I visited Finca Marta earlier this year the food was fresh and delicious, as I had heard," said Daniel Whittle, who has visited Cuba nearly 100 times since 2000 as a director for the Environmental Defense Fund. "But I was astonished at the variety of fresh vegetables Fernando and his wife Claudia were serving up, none of which are exactly staples of the Cuban diet.”

Workers at Finca Marta load a fresh harvest into a battered sedan for delivery to Havana restaurants. (Kevin Spear / Orlando Sentinel)

Funes provides for neighbors but has larger a plan for feeding more Cubans, involving the purchase of a refrigerated van that would enable him to sell produce within urban neighborhoods.

Fulfilling that goal will require an acquired patience in a nation that only in about the past decade has eased restrictions on Cubans owning cars and homes, traveling abroad and selling goods directly to private entrepreneurs.

Funes, however, is not without resources, including outsized charisma, a doctoral degree from Wageningen University in the Netherlands and pedigree.

His parents, Fernando Funes Aguilar and Marta Monzote, also agricultural scientists, were trailblazers in calling attention to the wreckage from Cuba’s heavy mechanization and use of chemicals for a single crop: sugarcane.

In his Ph.D. thesis in 2008, Funes wrote that a decade of work with his mother brought “the most inspiring moments in my professional career thus far.”

His mother died in 2007 and five years later, as Funes began digging a well by hand, he named his farm after her.

Fernando Funes Monzote survey terraced beds at his Finca Marta farm west of Havana. (Kevin Spear / Orlando Sentinel)

That well would become Finca Marta’s liquid heart but has served as its psychological touchstone.

To acquire farmland, Funes bought the disintegrating home of an elderly man who had not cultivated his surrounding fields for many years. With that purchase, Funes then secured government rights to 20 acres.

The place had gone wild with tough, thorny vines. But that was cosmetic compared with a larger concern: no water source.

“The well was a metaphor for the will for transformation,” Funes said. “When we started digging, neighbors thought that we were crazy. Few people would be willing to dig a well in rock for seven months. We had to spend thousands of hours breaking rocks.”

Drinkable water greeted the diggers at 50 feet; a farm was born.

Fernando Funes Monzote founded his Finca Marta farm west of Havana nearly eight years ago. He has traveled widely, speaking about his sustainable methods, and works his fields regularly. (Kevin Spear / Orlando Sentinel)

The four “pillars” for Finca Marta are environmental harmony, education and research, equitable trade and tourism.

Environmental harmony includes a gravity-flow system for manure. Waste washed from the barn each morning flows into a digester that produces methane for the farm’s kitchen stove and a decomposed slurry for enriching soil.

A pair of solar panels runs the pump for the well, and Funes hopes one day to go fully off the grid.

“Agro-tourism is important for nourishing broader respect “that agriculture could be a good life.”

“It’s not only about producing food,” Funes said. “It’s part of the transformation of life in the countryside for the benefit of the whole society.”

Also key to Funes' approach: keep it small.

He does not plan to grow the size of his farm, with about a dozen workers, because that would require a move to monoculture that ruins the connection between people and nature, he said. Instead he wants to spread networks of farms like his.

“Organic is soil. Organic is live. Organic is people,” he said. “It builds equity, good socio-economic status and just distribution of the benefits.”

The farm has one, prized piece of mechanization: a tiller purchased this year. It is powered by a small gas engine but otherwise is manually operated in preparing the soils of terraced beds.

Of the spread of small-scale, sustainable farming in Cuba, Funes has been a leading ambassador, speaking to universities, foundations and trade groups in the U.S. and other countries.

Fernando Funes Monzote, an agricultural scientist who founded Finca Marta west of Havana, hopes that his sustainable farming methods serve as a model for a better Cuba. (Kevin Spear / Orlando Sentinel)

Funes also went to Washington, D.C., this spring, meeting with congressional representatives.

“I have been impressed with Fernando Funes’ research on rural development and sustainable agriculture,” said U.S. Rep. Kathy Castor, a Tampa Democrat. “… his farm can serve as a model for flourishing, sustainable and cooperative rural livelihoods.”

Funes said there is enormous potential for agricultural advances from better cooperation with the U.S. He said relations between the two nations can hinge partly on Cuba’s rise of small farming.

“We can make an impact on society by showing what we do here, that other ways are possible,” he said. “I’m not a politician, but I’m Cuban.”

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