page_title: Organopónicos
section_title: Current status
hierarchical_section_title: Organopónicos / Current status
caption_attribution_description: English: Small urban agriculture business in Havana, Cuba. Deutsch: Kleiner Stadtlandwirtschaftsbetrieb in Havanna, Kuba.
context_page_description: Organopónicos or organoponics is a system of urban agriculture using organic gardens. It originated in Cuba and is still mostly focused there. It often consists of low-level concrete walls filled with organic matter and soil, with lines of drip irrigation laid on the surface of the growing media. Organopónicos is a labour-intensive form of local agriculture.
  Organopónico farmers employ a wide variety of agroecological techniques including integrated pest management, polyculture, and crop rotation. Most organic materials are also produced within the gardens through composting. This allows production to take place with few petroleum-based inputs.
  Organopónicos first arose as a community response to lack of food security during the Special Period after the collapse of the Soviet Union. It is publicly functioning in terms of ownership, access, and management, but heavily subsidized and supported by the Cuban government.
context_section_description: More than 35,000 hectares (over 87,000 acres) of land are being used in urban agriculture in Havana alone. 
  Havana produces enough food for each resident to receive a daily serving of 280 grams (9.88 ounces) of fruits and vegetables.  The urban agricultural workforce in Havana has grown from 9,000 in 1999 to 23,000 in 2001 and more than 44,000 in 2006. However, Cuba still has food rationing for basic staples. Approximately 69% of these rationed basic staples (wheat, vegetable oils, rice, etc.) are imported. Overall, however, approximately 16% of food is imported from abroad.
  The structures of organopónicos vary from garden to garden. Some are run by state employees, others are run cooperatively by the gardeners themselves. The government provides community farmers with the land and the water, and sells key materials such as organic compost, seeds, irrigation parts, and organic pesticides called "biocontrols" in the form of beneficial insects and plant-based oils. These biological pest and disease controls are produced in some 200 government centers across the country.
  All garden crops such as beans, tomatoes, bananas, lettuce, okra, eggplant and taro are grown intensively within Havana using only organic methods, the only methods permitted in the urban parts of Havana. No chemicals are used in 68% of Cuban corn, 96% of cassava, 72% of coffee and 40% of bananas. Between 1998 and 2001, chemicals were reduced by 60% in potatoes, 89% in tomatoes, 28% in onion and 43% in tobacco.
  
  Despite the successes of organoponics, efforts of the Cuban government have been negatively evaluated by some authors. A 2012 article in The Economist stated:
  The grip of the state on Cuban farming has been disastrous. State farms of various kinds hold 75% of Cuba's 6.7m hectares of agricultural land. In 2007 some 45% of this was lying idle, much of it overrun by marabú, a tenacious weed. Cuba is the only country in Latin America where killing a cow is a crime (and eating beef a rare luxury). That has not stopped the cattle herd declining from 7m in 1967 to 4m in 2011.
  — The Economist
  The same article claimed that As of 2012, there were plans to privatise farming and dismantle organopónicos, as part of broader plans to improve productivity. However, as of 2018, organopónicos are still an active component of the Cuban agricultural system.
caption: Havana small farm
exif: {"Image Make": "Canon", "Image Model": "Canon EOS 450D", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image DateTime": "2015:03:23 12:17:02", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Co-sited", "Image ExifOffset": "2308", "Image XPKeywords": "[69, 0, 88, 0, 75, 0, 95, 0, 67, 0, 85, 0, 66, 0, 65, 0, 95, 0, 66, 0, 79, 0, 75, 0, 85, 0, 95, 0, 50, 0, 48, 0, 49, 0, 53, 0, 95, 0, 83, 0, 66, 0, 0, 0]", "Image Padding": "[]", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "13302", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "6826", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/320", "EXIF FNumber": "10", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Program Normal", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "200", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0221", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2015:03:23 12:17:02", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2015:03:23 12:17:02", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF ShutterSpeedValue": "67/8", "EXIF ApertureValue": "53/8", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire", "EXIF FocalLength": "18", "EXIF SubSecTime": "40", "EXIF SubSecTimeOriginal": "40", "EXIF SubSecTimeDigitized": "40", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "4272", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "2848", "Interoperability InteroperabilityVersion": "[48, 49, 48, 48]", "EXIF InteroperabilityOffset": "13190", "EXIF FocalPlaneXResolution": "2136000/439", "EXIF FocalPlaneYResolution": "356000/73", "EXIF FocalPlaneResolutionUnit": "2", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "EXIF Padding": "[]", "EXIF OffsetSchema": "4152"}