Meeting a True Innovator
March 27, 2015
By Simon Chambers
PWRDF sent a delegation of diocesan representatives, Youth Council members, a local farmer and PWRDF staff to Cuba in mid-March. They blogged while they were there, and now that they’re home, we will be posting their adventures in their own words. Today’s instalment comes from Don Dewar, a farmer from Dauphin, Manitoba.
Happy St. Patrick’s Day
We leave the CCRD right on time at 9:15 to visit the farm of Omar Gonzalez Santamaria. Omar owns 10 hectares of land on which he produces a large variety of fruit crops as well as flowers for the hotels of Varadero. Omar belongs to the National Association of Small Producers, although his is one of the largest farms we have visited.
Although he is not 100% organic, he works to reduce his reliance on commercial fertilizers and chemicals, and has attended many meetings on innovation throughout Central and South America. Omar is an innovator, not afraid to try new ideas and processes.
Omar raises cattle and hogs along with his various crops. He has capacity for about 10 hogs. He does not keep sows to raise the young, but purchases small weanlings to finish for market. This is similar to the practice in Canada where the barn if filled, the hogs finished and marketed, the barn sanitized and then re-populated.
What is really different is the bio-gas unit installed beside the hog barn to process the manure into bio-gas which they use in the house for cooking. At the time of our visit, he had had no hogs for 2 weeks, and there was still gas being produced for the house.
While we were talking, he showed us his tractor as it went by. Two oxen pulling a large cart. The oxen pull the plow-which he hesitates to use, but finds it necessary to break up the hard ground. In Canada we have the frost.
Omar sells most of his crops through a 208 person co-op which provides the logistics and transportation of products to market and the Varadero hotels.
The biggest challenge is beef and milk production. The prices to the farmer are so low for both products that there is no incentive to improve production methods, or even produce. They lack the pasture and feed storage technology to produce year round.
The price of a steak in one of the hotels is more than the farmer receives for the whole animal.
Omar is a true innovator, training other trainers in new methods of production. He makes maximum use of his land base, growing melons beneath fruit trees, rotating pastures for his cattle, and producing virtually everything he needs– save the molasses for the hogs– restricted only by his imagination.
We can only be amazed how Omar and others find ways to be progressive in a society that resists change.
After lunch at the Christian Center for Reflection and Dialogue (CCRD), we visited El Retiro-The retreat- a farm started by and connected to the CCRD. In 1999, CCRD’s founder Raimundo Garcia acquired 32 hectares for the Centre. This land needed to be cleared of native scrub trees and weeds to become productive.
El Retiro now produces all types of vegetables, 12 different citrus fruits, and a rotation of corn and beans in small fields. All production is organic, and used for the workers and the centre. They also supply 11 social service centres along with schools and daycares.
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