Cuba, tropical island, famously fertile soil, why’re there food shortages? Even peasant farming should be able to get somewhere, right?
And sure, they do now allow the peasant plots. Which do have much better yields than the state farms. They use a lot of “agroecological” techniques which is, I think, the modern code word for medieval peasantry methods. But they’re not growing wheat, they’re growing yams, yucca, beans, light veggies and citrus. Things where the peasant farmer can indeed produce a considerable surplus even using those medieval techniques, no fertiliser – other than night soil – etc.
So I was still not quite getting why horrendous food shortages. They’ve got those peasant plots, peasants can sell in free markets, should all work out even if there’s going to be a shortage of beefsteak on such a basis.
Ah. You’ve got sell 80% of your crop to the state at state determined prices. Yea, even if you’re farming half an acre with a hoe and machete. And guess how efficient the state is at coming to pick up your crop, let alone take a guess at the prices the state offers……
Sure, I know, pretty silly thing to thing about but there the thought arrived as I was hacking at weeds in my own garden in fact. Yes, I’m getting, for the very first time in my life, a real and direct idea of how much physical effort goes into hand farming. I’m not being stupid enough to actually try to feed myself – a few chili peppers just to show I can notwithstanding. And the muttering I’m doing to myself is, well, if you know what you’re doing (!) then yes, you really can feed yourself and household off a few acres. With a substantial surplus to sell too. It’s not going to be grand riches, by any means, but there wouldn’t be a shortage of plant based food calories.
A general shortage of basic plant – and perhaps eggs, say – calories has to be about something else therefore. And there I found it – the 80% confiscation (because their prices are confiscatory) by the State. The peasants are growing enough to feed their families, which no doubt disappears into bellies before the state calculation of yield, then there’s only a bit on top.
And that, I assume – or even would insist – is why beaucoup de fertile land on a tropical island – citrus is damn near a weed in such places, ‘nananananas too – with private plots allowed still has basic food shortages. Because, effectively, the state steals 80% of what the farmers don’t simply stuff into their own bellies.
It should even be possible to test this. Check the diets of the peasant farmers. Really test them – and find out whether they’re living off the declared crops that the state takes 80% of or there’s a bit of leakage before that calculation.
The thing that’s always got me about the Cuban variety of socialism is just how drearily shite it is. Yes, yes, gross political repression, the early days most certainly saw more than a few bourgeois up against the wall and so on. But over the decades it all just seems to be so, well, shite. I mean, seriously,. food shortages on a tropical island with a surplus of fertile land? How fucking shite do you have to be to achieve that?
80% eh? Bit more than a tithe. Suppose your early medieval (i.e. before the Black Death) serf also put in two days a week of labour for his landlord – that’s 33% of his working week. Plus some more days at peak season.
So he’s still probably left with about 50% of his productive capacity for himself and his family. So 80% is whistle-making steep.
Laffer curve ?
…
“food shortages on a tropical island with a surplus of fertile land? How fucking shite do you have to be to achieve that”. That’s a brilliant closer.
Possibly better than that Jimmy Carr refrain on the moaning unemployed ‘cos inwards free movement from people who don’t speak the language or have anywhere to stay for nowt are coming and taking their job. “How schit must you be?”
The opposite of communism is communism.
Communism relies on state control of the means of production. But its reach is limited. To survive two or three generations, as in Cuba, it is necessary to harness some of man’s worst instincts, spite and envy.
The relatively successful farmer shames his lazy neighbour. His title to the land in dubious, his neighbour can complain that the reason for the difference in yield is land quality, size of plot, tools bought on the black market…
I reckon the snitching and bullying in Cuba would make the GDR look nice. It’s not communism (or yes it is), it’s a war of every man against each other.
And then you have a centralised distribution system that is so inefficient that most of the confiscated crop rots anyway.
Still, useful to look at failed states (Cuba, Haiti, Sudan, Somalia, UK, etc) to learn lessons in not how to do it.
Looking at the numbers it appears the small farmers are 4 times as productive as the state farms. This is only going to get more as the state farms will continue to depend on fuel they can’t get while the small farmers will choose crops that can be harvested by hand.
For their sake, I do hope no Cuban bureaucrats read this blog.
I’d guess the peasants give the appropriate bureaucrat some of those undeclared crops to shut him up.
Good point; perhaps they should weigh the inspectors instead.
80%? That means you need to grow a four-fold surplus just to avoid starving! Even the medival one-day-for-the-church is only 14%.
Well western governments ~3x that 14%
According to Guido Fawkes blog today is tax freedom day, so its closer to x4.
Me thinks your math is wrong..
– 3 x 14% = 42%
– 4 x 14% = 56%
Early June as % of full year = 155 / 365 = 42%
Q.E.D.
Akchewally – only a small part of Cuba is very fertile. The majority, if it was in the past, has been greatly degraded over the generations. Sugarcane plantations did a lot of harm.
Secondly, ‘great surplus’ for peasant farmers – even efficient ones – is still only gonna feed one extra mouth for every two farming. There are a lot of non-farmers in Cuban cities.
Thirdly, even if you produce a lot of food, there’s the issue of storing it (you only produce it in large quantities twice a year), and then distributing it. Even if your farms are butting right up against one side of a city, the cost of transport to the other side when you don’t have much mechanical aid (no fuel for trucks) means no one is going to ship food there.
Yep. I remember reading that in India, close to half the food produced was lost between farm and fork. That figure will be lower now because India has been developing a lot of logistics over the past decade or so.
Yep. I remember reading that in India, close to half the food produced was lost between farm and fork.
That was the argument for allowing the likes Tesco to invest in the country because the reality is the logistics companies and not retailers, that’s the relatively easy bit.
It’s why the food in India is (still) appalling. Those vegetables that get to the plate are moving beyond stale to rotten. The food is only good if you can see the field it was grown in.
And all of those are excuses. We’ve known how to do that for centuries, but socialism/communism (the same thing but more) rots everything it touches.
My dad went a fair way towards feeding his family from the garden. I have a pretty big garden but I only sort of dabble. A big difference is that, because dad had cultivated his plot for years, it gradually got less prone to being taken over by weeds. My rather sporadic attempts mean that, if I turn my back on it for a week or two, it starts to revert back to being a jungle again. It is really just a bit of a hobby for me, I get some satisfaction from it but it isn’t really worth the work that I have to put in.
Regarding Cuba, and other countries with similar problems, it never seems to occur to anyone that this isn’t really working so we need to do what successful countries do instead. Presumably it is working just fine for the people running the place. They probably just blame all the problems on the US.
I agree. I’ve never understood why the US doesn’t just say “We’re ending sanctions so that nobody can doubt in future that it’s all your own bloody fault.”
Similarly I’ve never understood why the US feels a need to pretend to a long-lasting blood feud with Iran. I don’t suppose it’s because of a perverted feeling of guilt for all those Iranians they murdered in the airliner years ago.
Perhaps it might be all the people the Iranians murdered in the airliner they shot down – including my Iranian pal and his newly-wed wife, returning from a trip to Iran to see her parents.
I can’t understand why they keep blaming the US. There’s 192 other countries they can trade with.
You’re basically correct Tim. The problem in Cuba will be the State has the monopoly on transportation.
I’ve had a similar experience with my Colombia project. The starting condition was a poor family, in a poor barrio of a poor colombian town. For “town”, think of something with a fairly developed center that fades out at the edges into the campo. Which is where the poor live. So I bought them a bit of land. Only a few hectares. To grow these sort of crops on & raise chickens. The chickens process the crop waste into eggs & chicken. You don’t need much in the way of fertiliser because you have S. American triad. Maize, beans, squashes or peppers grown together. The beans fix nitrogen. So I got them being semi-self sufficient & they had a surplus to sell. The cash would buy what they can’t produce. Rice, meat, oil etc. If they could sell it.
Go on Streetview & look at one of these towns. You see motos, the odd burro & cart, but outside of the town center almost no vehicles. So I bought them a second hand van from Cali. Useful having connections. And that’s really got it going. These days it’s really a transport company with at present 4 vehicles. And it’s providing a local transport service. So, on paper at least, I’m headed to being a colombian billionare. ( 1,000,000 COP = £208.40 GB 🙂 ) But what it has done is raise the living standards of a considerable number of colombians. Just took what they don’t have. A remarkably small amount of capital & some arse kicking.
Next stop for me looks like being Brasil. I can probably do the same thing there. Already got some plans. The resource is the labour. It just needs deploying effectively.
Why don’t they do it themselves? It’s the ghastly fatalism of the Catholic church which they’re brainwashed with from birth. What I get back from CO is “Gracias Dio”. It is not their fucking Dio. Their priest would devoutly watch them die of starvation because it’s good for their souls. It’s a very ungody Brit who would have cheerfully have donated the nails for the Crucifixion. And their own efforts. Communism’s just another charismatic religion. Why Catholics are so vulnerable to it.
BiS, you’re clearly an evil fascist imperialist. Up against the wall please comrade.
He’s right tho, seen the same thing here.
That’ll be the Brazil that currently has more practicing Protestants than Catholics.
I’m dealing with Bahia where Candomble’s popular. That’s an African polytheist religion hiding behind a Catholic front. I quite like the orixas. Sort of gods you can cut deals with. Whether the Brasilians I know are practicing Catholics they’re almost all believing Catholics. That’s the way they’ve been brought up. But a lot of them also believe in bruxaria. Which is basically witchcraft. Very common in S.America.
Cuba has kulaks too!