Document(s) 9 of 13

In November 1999, the Urban Agriculture Programme ‘Cities Feeding People’ of the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) published the results of a workshop in which the impact of several projects developed in Latin America and the Caribbean region was evaluated.¹ When this workshop was carried out, at the end of May 1999, the research project ‘Evaluation of Urban Agriculture as a component of the local economy in two areas of Havana, Cuba’ (97-0008 FUNAT Cuba) was eleven months old. This chapter attempts to summarize the results and impact of the project during its three years of work.

1. Agricultura Urbana en América Latina y el Caribe. Impactos de proyectos de investigación. Taller Investigando el Desarrollo de la Agricultura Urbana en la América Latina y el Caribe. Balance y Optimización de Impactos de Proyectos. San José, Costa Rica, May 23–27, 1999. IDRC/FLACSO, November 1999.

This research project has been carried out by the Fundación Antonio Núñez Jiménez de la Naturaleza y el Hombre (FANJ) together with several institutions, specialists, and producers. The project is part of the enhancement programme of the urban agriculture sector, which has grown significantly in Havana. In this context, any action at the research level has had a direct effect, to a lesser or greater extent, on the specific activities performed by the actors involved and, indirectly, in broadening the scope of their respective areas of work.

The project did not seek to obtain isolated results and impacts, however relevant they might have been, but rather to provide continuity for the urban agriculture enhancement process by using new approaches, criteria and alternatives for solving existing problems. That is why the FANJ has oriented its work toward the creation of an Inter-Institutional and Multidisciplinary Research Team.

The Fundación Antonio Núñez Jiménez’s research team has been working for five years now in its Urban Agriculture Programme. Among the many activities carried out by this programme is the provision of training in permaculture to more than 300 producers and technicians, with the goal of achieving a greater level of integration between the urban environment and agriculture. The Urban Agriculture Programme has also provided assistance within and outside Cuba to the development of urban agriculture in the Latin American and Caribbean region and has provided support to other institutions in tasks related to urban agriculture.

There is no doubt that the research project – the first of this nature for the Foundation’s Urban Agriculture Program – will bring valuable experience to the institution and will become an important tool for ensuring the continuity of its activities.

Definition of Components Included in the Evaluation

Human Resources Development: Improving abilities and skills either during or as a result of the project by means of minicourses, dissemination and sharing of information or any other form of collaboration with formal research.

Strengthening of the Institutional Capacity: Equipping, reconditioning, improving or renovating equipment, programmes, literature, administrative and management systems, consultancies or support with services and know-how.

Effectiveness of the Local Collaboration: Working relationships with other organizations or institutions, whether related to the research or not.

Awareness of the Gender Approach: Awareness of the need to include a gender approach in the activities and the manner in which this approach can be applied.

Contribution of the Multidisciplinary Approach: Benefits that were improved as a result of applying a multidisciplinary approach or benefits maintained that would otherwise have been lost or reduced.

Scientific and Methodological Progress: Innovative designs, application of new guidelines, evaluation or transfer of these new elements.

Benefits in Terms of the Results: Use made of the project’s findings or products by institutions or organizations; contribution to policy-making. Development of new processes that were somehow influenced, partially or totally, by the progress of the research.

Funds and Resources: Ability to generate income or financial or technical or organizational support resources for the future leverage of the research itself or for the organization that has developed the research in order to produce that process.

Outcome and Impact on each of the Components Included in the Evaluation

Human Resources Development

The training of human resources in urban agriculture in Havana cannot be seen as a process connected with specific results or particular projects or actions. Human resources training has been part on an ongoing process involving numerous institutions and people in a gradual and systematic process, although mainly sectoral in scope.

This research project is part of the ongoing process. Its scope and objectives go beyond the narrow framework concerning technological systems and/or technical problems of agricultural production on which the development of this activity has been centred until now. This research project contributes a new vision and a new way of addressing urban agriculture that is more in line with the urban environment in which the activity takes place.

The training of human resources was also the result of exchanges and discussions among the individuals and institutions involved in the seven workshops and more than 40 working meetings and consultations held during the research work, in which not only the professionals in the research team, who represented different institutions, were involved but also other technicians working directly in the production areas of the city.

Similar links have also been established with other institutions and government bodies, either in the quest for information or through interviews with producers and consumers in the areas of Camilo Cienfuegos People’s Council and Havana’s Parque Metropolitano.

As a result of this learning process, the institutions, specialists and producers involved in the research team are now prepared to do the following:

• Implement research projects using a combination of criteria from several disciplines.
• Provide technicians and producers with a more integral concept of the urban agricultural function.
• Evaluate the implications of a sectoral management of urban agriculture in a more objective and comprehensive manner.
• Recognize the actors within the population who should be included in urban management and in economic, technical, agricultural, environmental and other types of evaluations, as required by the current status of this urban function.
• Include a gender approach.
• Seek the harmonious and permanent insertion of urban agriculture in the urban environment.
• Apply a wider scope for evaluating the investment emerging from this new function.

The approaches and tools used and the indicators developed, as well as the results obtained in several areas of work, have had a great value and a potential for rapid expansion in the Cuban context. This outcome is due to the high level of education in Cuba, where the general minimum level of schooling is Grade Nine.

On the other hand, the application of such approaches, instruments and indicators shows the possibility and the need to develop specific mechanisms for planning, following-up and evaluating the different modes of urban agriculture at the local level.

Another benefit of the project has been the professional advancement of the research team members through their participation in workshops, courses and seminars held in other countries in the region. The project was the direct beneficiary of these results, since the members of the research team brought back to the project the newly learned methods, tools, viewpoints, which also contributed to reaffirming and refining the

differences and similarities of the urban agricultural development in Cuba to that of other countries.

Concerning human resources training, the work of the research project expanded beyond Cuba with the dissemination and exchange of information, the search for a common language and for a conceptual framework for urban agriculture.

The recognition by other institutions of the level of preparation of the FANJ technicians and other members of the research team has increased the possibilities of collaboration with other entities. One such example is the assistance provided to the municipalities of Cuenca (Ecuador) and Santiago de los Caballeros (Dominican Republic) for the design and implementation of urban agriculture programmes for these cities, with successful results.

Strengthening the Institutional Capacity

Because of the serious economic problems that Cuba faced during the 1990s, the shortage of material resources available to the institutions forced them to focus their attention on strengthening their capacities for current and future work and, above all, on making the best possible use of the valuable technical human resources trained in more than 40 years of free education in all the centres and at all the educational levels available in Cuba.

The Fundación Antonio Núñez Jiménez de la Naturaleza y el Hombre is a non-profit, non-governmental organization that was created in 1994. The securing of material resources by the research project increased the possibilities of its implementation and made other related work in the same areas easier to carry out. For instance, the expansion of the working objectives for the urban agriculture program and the preparation, submission and approval of projects during this period.

As a result of the training of FANJ technicians in the research field and the coordinating actions required by the research project, the institution has strengthened its capacity to have an impact on urban agriculture development issues in the country and in the region. The capacity building at the institutional and professional levels has been enhanced by the strong relationships established with other national and international institutions and agencies during the research process.

The FANJ was in a good position (material and human resources and inter-institutional relations) to organize the meeting of the AGUILA network regional project in Havana (September 1998) and the II Assembly

of the AGUILA Network (November 1999) and for disseminating and exchanging information on the research in numerous events held within and outside Cuba.

The availability of material resources and the training of human resources in activities such as workshops, the design and application of participatory techniques for capturing and analyzing data, and participation in the events and projects mentioned above strengthened the institutions, specialists and producers involved in the research team, and its collaborators.

Effectiveness of the Local Collaboration

The institutions that are represented in the research team and others, such as the Water Directorate, the Faculty of Geography, the Group for the Integral Development of Havana, the Centre for Urban Studies of Havana’s Polytechnic Superior Institute, the Cuban Association of Livestock Production and the Community Project for the Conservation of Food, among others, have been assisting in one way or another in the implementation of this project and, in several ways, in the development of urban agriculture in Havana and in other Cuban cities.

The promotion of this collaboration has been fostered in part by government departments. The research project has been instrumental in further consolidating these forms of collaboration, with the possibility of achieving an even greater level of integration in the future work on urban agriculture and including new criteria for the enhancement of urban agriculture in Cuba and, especially, in Havana.

Working together on the implementation of the research project activities, such as screening and recycling the household organic waste in one of the areas under study, made it possible to strengthen the relationships among the team members, producers, consumers and the local government. This experience shows important benefits acquired as a result of the implementation of the project (soil improvement, development of environmental education, decrease in the volume of waste to be transported, inclusion of other sources of organic matter, among others) not only in the immediate area of the project but also in other areas of the city.

It is important to note that, during this period of the implementation of the research project and as a result of the work carried out, collaboration with other institutions in the country has improved: for instance, such institutions as the European Studies Centre (Centro de Estudios de Europa)

and the Ministry of Collaboration and Foreign Investment (Ministerio de la Colaboración y de la Inversión Extranjera), which work with the Cuban NGOs in seeking support from abroad for the implementation of projects. Relations with project representatives and foreign organizations located in Cuba have also been strengthened. A summary of the results described above can be found in the sections of this chapter devoted to Areas of Impact and Securing Funds and Resources.

Awareness of the Gender Approach

The living conditions for Cuban women are better than those in many countries in the region, and that is why gender has not been included in the past in many research works and in other studies. Even the way of addressing this subject is still unknown. In this context, the research team saw the need for learning about the subject through workshops and consultations held with the support of IDRC and Cuban experts, in order to reverse this situation.

Throughout the document outlining the results of the project, the presence of women and other segments of the population in the development of urban agriculture is evident, taking into account the Cuban context concerning gender issues and the information available in Cuba, in Havana and, especially, in the areas under study.

Although the project initially did not seek a balanced proportion of men and women in the research team, in practice 47 per cent of the research team are women. This is a significant sample of the situation among the general population, where 64 per cent of the technical work force in Cuba are women. It is precisely at the technical level where we find higher participation by women in urban agriculture, but at both extremes – at the higher management level and in direct production activities – this percentage starts to decrease.

The evaluation shows that the best results of the research work that has been carried out on gender issues are those pointing to the lack of information, except in the two regions under study, especially concerning the participation of women in direct production activities among the elderly in general and, within this age group, among men and women who live alone and therefore are more vulnerable.

The lack of information in terms of figures and also with respect to the identification of the objectives, needs and interests of all the population segments mentioned above is the result of inadequate studies on the issue. In this context, the research team and the institutions involved in the

project considered that it was important to include this subject in any future work by the research teams and the participating institutions.

Contribution of the Multi-disciplinary Approach

The results obtained about urban agriculture in Havana are relevant. However, they present the problem of not having applied a fully multidisciplinary approach to the production components and to other equally important aspects such as the rate of return, the use of urban soil, solutions concerning water for irrigation purposes, reuse of the household organic waste and the establishment of mutually beneficial relations with the city beyond contributions to food security.

But even with these shortcomings, in addressing these and other problems, the research project has taken into account the criteria and interests of several disciplines and the integration of all of them in Cuba and in the activities carried out on Cuban soil. One important component in this regard was the participation of producers in the study. Noting the gaps and possible solutions, it is also a result of a multi-disciplinary approach and possibly one of the most important contributions of the research.

The development and implementation of the project produced an impact on the way in which, with a few specific exceptions, the subject of urban agriculture in Cuba has been addressed over the last ten years. It has been limited to institutions and professionals of the agriculture-livestock sector.

The involvement, over time, of an increasing number of collaborators and institutions represented in the research team, can be measured by their participation in workshops and working meetings, as well as in the information sources used and the reports prepared. These results supported the view held by the research team that the implementation of the project required the application of an integral multi-disciplinary approach.

Scientific and Methodological Progress

The research project is the first experience in Havana and possibly in Cuba (no information on any similar project has been found) of addressing urban agriculture in an integral manner and specifically considering its relations with the urban environment.

The results obtained in the different work areas, such as the possible ways of inserting urban agriculture in the land management system, the evaluation of efficiency in each of the urban agriculture production modes, the producers-consumers relations established for the recycling of organic

matter and its use as a tool for promoting environmental education, are innovative methods for enhancing urban agricultural practices in Havana and in Cuba as a whole.

The identification of ways to achieve a higher level of economic and environmental sustainability for urban agriculture and its insertion as a component of the local economy are also innovative dimensions in our context. However, this document also presents weaknesses and challenges that require further and deeper analysis. These weaknesses and challenges in the research process have been included as a basis for establishing long-term goals.

The diversity of experts involved in the research made it possible, in many cases, to carry out objective group analyses from elements that the group itself defined. These analyses were used to close information gaps and perform evaluations with an acceptable level of precision. This was a valuable approach for obtaining results that otherwise would have been impossible to obtain and it also prepared the ground for future work.

The exchanges and dissemination of information carried out during the whole working process allowed us to obtain, and use feedback from different sources, and to have a systematic validation of the results as they were being produced. The sharing of information also provided, among other things, the necessary data to complete work stages and to modify the contents and scope of the subjects addressed as required.

Benefits in Terms of the Results

The institutions represented in the research team, the collaborators and producers involved, and the government departments in the areas under study are now more prepared for enhancing this new urban function and for facing the challenge of its continuity beyond a period of economic crisis.

The relations established among producers, consumers and local government for recycling household organic waste, the ways of inserting urban agriculture in the land management system, the multidisciplinary approach applied into the research, the search for alternative ways of solving the problem of water for irrigation, the analysis of the efficiency of the various urban agriculture modes in Havana, among others, are highly useful tools for the future work of the institutions, producers, and local government officials who were involved in the research.

The results of the research and, particularly, the exchanging and dissemination of information associated with the research process have

made those results known beyond the national boundaries and are being used as a reference in other projects in the region, permitting comparisons and promoting further information exchanges. Despite the differences in context, it has been possible to identify both the commonalities and the differences in those projects, which is an important contribution for determining gaps in the research that have to be filled at the level of agricultural extension, promotion of training and research, and the different ways of inserting urban agriculture in the urban environment on a permanent basis.

The production of a document containing all the essential issues in the emergence and evolution of urban agriculture, as well as the different ways in which this urban function can be integrated with other urban functions in Havana, is extremely valuable for those seeking a theoretical approach to the subject. It is also useful for those interested in consolidating and enhancing this activity, especially considering that this document includes causes, effects and changes, alongside weaknesses and needs that require further analysis in order to reach concrete objectives, which are also defined in the book.

It is important to point out that during the last year of the research project the FANJ developed the strategic plan of its Urban Agriculture Programme. Knowledge acquired by the project area, the research results and the working relationships established during the implementation phase allowed for the development of a more participatory process that is wider in scope and includes definitions of guidelines, contents and priorities for that programme.

Securing Funds and Resources

The research project has benefited the Fundación Antonio Núñez Jiménez by increasing its possibilities of securing additional resources for strengthening its institutional capacity, in the training provided for its technical personnel for preparing and submitting projects, and in the relations it has been able to conduct with the AGUILA Network and other international institutions.

Projects Supported by the Research Project

1. Permaculture Training on nutrition, health and composting in small urban spaces in Havana and Cienfuegos. (Permaculture IV): The Australian Conservation Foundation learnt about the
   preliminary results of this research and decided to allocate funds for this local action project, which is currently being carried out.
2. Actions in Permaculture in Havana: The OXFAM family, specifically OXFAM Great Britain, learnt about the FANJ’s urban agriculture programme and decided to fund this project to provide training on Permaculture for agricultural extension officers of the Urban Agriculture Directorate of the Ministry Office, for urban producers and small community groups. The project was completed in November 2000.
3. Cuba-Canada Environmental Restoration Project, Year 2: This ACDI project was carried out between the Evergreen Foundation of Canada, the FANJ and Parque Metropolitano de La Habana (PMH). A main component of this project was the building of the nursery for the Parque Metropolitano. The work undertaken by this research project concerning the PMH was a very important element for developing the proposal of the Cuba-Canada Environmental Restoration Project for its second year. The nursery is a key component in the reforestation programme of the PMH and the city.
4. Training and environmental education project for the management of solid waste in a community of Havana’s Parque Metropolitano: The design of this training and environmental education project, financed by the Heinrich Böll Foundation of Germany, included, as a priority, the identification by the participants in the research project of the problem of solid waste, its potential as a source of organic matter and the possible links to urban agriculture processes in the PMH. A group of community people with the knowledge and willingness to implement this community action plan participated in the project, which was completed in the year 2000.
5. Project for a magazine Se Puede Vivir en Ecópolis: This quarterly magazine has been in circulation in the country for several years now. It is considered the only popular magazine on environmental matters. It publishes issues of 10,000 copies and is an important means for disseminating information about our Permaculture projects. The research project identified several general areas of influence on agriculture and urban environment dealt with in this magazine.

   This context provided the justification for developing a separate project for this magazine. The German NGOs KATE and Puente Norte-Sur
   provide support for the publication of eight issues of the magazine. One of these issues will be devoted to the results obtained by the research project.

General Considerations

The selection of a research project on urban agriculture, from the identification of components that go beyond production is very important in the Cuban context and for other countries as well because it is an activity inserted into the urban environment that demands a totally different approach from that used for the rural environment.

However, although the economic, political and social conditions in Cuba are different from those in the rest of Latin America and the Caribbean region, we all share common interests, such as food shortages for one reason or another; the deterioration and loss of agricultural soils; the importance of using and/or recycling organic waste and water; the need to plan our cities in line with our realities and requirements; to work on the basis of inter-institutional complementarity and to reach a level of community management according to the availability of our own resources. All these reasons increase the value of the project’s information exchanges and dissemination, its results and its impacts.

The time that elapsed between the design of the project, the access to and availability of funds and the implementation of the project had a bearing on the research, considering the fact that it was then that a serious economic crisis occurred, the outcome of which was initially impossible to predict. However, the research considered that the main objectives set down for the research had been achieved and that the impact of the changes mentioned was limited to the re-evaluation of certain subjects and to addressing them from the perspective of the real situation and not in terms of speculation or forecast.

The research team considers that that project had no negative impacts, although it is necessary to clarify that, in some of the areas evaluated, the impacts will be seen further on, as the recommendations and proposals emerging from the research results are being applied.

The classification of areas according to level of impact are as follows:

Although local collaboration was a success, this is not considered a matter of major impact because in Cuba it is not very difficult to obtain this kind of collaboration if it is requested. Concerning the gender approach, it is necessary to explain that, even though important results were brought about by the project, as shown above, the research team thinks that this subject should be addressed in greater depth and with a broader view.

Document(s) 9 of 13