03/17/97 PRIVATE FARMING: TEN ACRES AND A LOAN (int'l edition)

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PRIVATE FARMING: TEN ACRES AND A LOAN (int'l edition)
City dwellers flock to idle land opened up by Havana, boosting farm productivity
Stooping over a row of bright green plants poking through the dirt, Rigoberto Duartes cradles a tobacco leaf in the palm of his hand. Four years ago, Duartes left his job as a barber to become a tobacco farmer on this 10-acre site in Pinar del Rio province. Although Duartes, 53, wasn't given title to the land, he jumped at the chance to return to the rural area where he grew up. ''Tobacco is in our blood,'' he says.
To revive its ailing agriculture, Cuba has opened thousands of acres of idle cropland to settlers. Some 60,000 have abandoned their city jobs to take up the offer. They call themselves private farmers because they own the crops they raise, though not the land. They have joined 95,000 small farm owners who were allowed to keep their plots after the 1959 revolution. They're also working side by side with new cooperatives--converted state farms whose members split the profits from sales of vegetables, livestock, and sugar cane to the state. The surge in private and cooperative farming has reduced state farms to just 33% of Cuba's agricultural land, down from 82% in 1993.
''NO LIMIT.'' The reforms have helped boost productivity after a disastrous fall. Vegetable output started to recover in 1995 after plunging in the early 1990s. The sugar harvest rose by more than 1 million tons in 1996, up from a low of 3.3 million in 1995. Total agricultural output jumped 17% in 1996, though Cuba still grows far less food than it needs.
For former city dwellers like Duartes, private farming offers the chance to create a better life. The government helped Duartes get started with a 1,500-peso--$75--bank loan at 6% interest. In his first year, he built a modest cement-and-wood house with a thatched roof and planted 42,000 seedlings. Now, he's planting three times as much and last year sold 11,400 pounds of tobacco to the government. Paid partly in dollars and partly in pesos, Duartes brought in the equivalent of 24,000 pesos last year. After paying his two hired hands and building a new curing shed for his tobacco, he netted 15,000 pesos. While that's only $750 at the free-market exchange rate, it's six times what he made as a barber.
Now Duartes is looking to expand. Although he must keep 70% of his land in tobacco, he's free to grow what he wants on the rest. He plans to plant rice, beans, and other vegetables for sale at private farmers' markets. And he aims to expand his vega--his tobacco farm--to 200,000 seedlings. Recently, his two sons, graduates of technical schools for electricians and for watch repair, respectively, joined him on the farm. One has branched out to his own seven-acre vega nearby. ''There's no limit as long as I can produce,'' Duartes says. That's the new ethos for Cuban private farmers.
By Gail DeGeorge and Gail Reed in Pinar del Rio

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