Off to Havana for Urban Ag and Sustainable Food Conference in May

I'm brushing up on my Spanish language skills because I want to hit the ground running when I arrive in Havana. I'm off for a 10-day Sustainable Agriculture and Urban Gardens Conference and Research tour. The tour is part of the major "Meeting on Organic and Sustainable Agriculture 2010" conference in Havana. It'll be heavily attended by delegates and presenters from South America, the US, Canada and the Caribbean. Hopefully a few Europeans will be there too. I'm looking forward to the one-stop shopping experience for my book research.

From May 6 to 9, I'll be touring urban gardens in Havana, Pinar del Rio province, Cienfuegos, Villa Clara, and Sancti Spiritus. Then the conference proper starts at the Hotel Nacional in Havana. All the big guns will be there, Fernando Funes, Miguel Salcines, etc ...

I'm curious about how the urban ag movement is sustaining itself through the second generation of farmers and growers. As any movement experiences, the fervour and idealism of the born-again-urban farmers will be a challenge to replicate in a second, third, fourth generation.

I've also heard whispers about how Cuba is flirting with allowing GMOs. This seems a potentially bizarre choice from an organics point of view, but given the love of science and technology in Cuban culture, not entirely out of left field.

And what about when the embargo lifts and the economy goes through a massive transformation. Will farming be such an eco-chic job in Cuba?

I've been researching and writing about the urban gardening movement for over two years ago now. Here's a link to an article I wrote for Maclean's magazine, Why Don't We Have Gardens Like This?. And here's a very good primer to the birth of the Cuban urban agriculture movement, The Cuba Diet: What Will You Be Eating When the Revolution Comes by the incomparable Bill McKibben writing in Harpers magazine.

Lastly, here's a longish (8-plus minutes!) BBC feature on urban gardening in Cuba and in Havana. I'll be tweeting and blogging from Cuba, so stay tuned.

Comments

[alexis]

So jealous!