Cuban Miracle

Well, I was doing my Environmental Sciences project on Cuban urban farming and for the first time, I actually had a hope that we might not be actually speeding our overweight vehicle of earth rapidly into the wall of doom. The work done there is nothing short of encouraging and I wish more people would take notice of it. I mean, this is the kind of work that needs propaganda!

Going back a little bit, the Cuban government was established by the USA and the head of states were just puppets of the United States. Enraged, the govt. was soon overthrown by the Communist Party and Fidel Castro became the leader. He nationalized all the American refineries without paying any compensation. The Americans retaliated by placing an embargo on all exports to Cuba except food and basic medicine.

The crisis hit Cuba hard and the govt. found it unable to even feed its population. Also, left without any modern machines or inputs for agriculture, the Cubans had to quickly do something to feed the starving millions. That's when the Cubans decided to chuck the policy of state holding the land and gave it back to the farmers. Old organic methods were revived and The Dept. Of Agriculture of Cuba actively promoted organic farming and "Bio-Fertilizers". The production saw a slump for the first 5 years but then increased dramatically and helped ease the problem of food shortage.

But the biggest success story of the Organic revolution in Cuba are the "Organoponicos" or urban farms. Picture this: Huge buildings, skyscrapers, residential areas and in the middle of it all, a farm where fruits and vegetables are grown. That is basically the urban farms and its an effort to make food and farming very much a part of urban life-connecting nature to life.Many of the Cuban households and restaurants grow their own vegetables on their rooftops or backyards. 

The icing on the cake, and the economists will love this one, the revolution created millions of jobs in the form of vermi-compost specialists, farmers etc. producing over 90% of fruits and vegetables that Cubans consume in around 7000 'Organoponicos' covering over 35,000 hectares of land.

The land quality has shot upwards and the land yield has quintupled and the pesticide usage has gown down so dramatically. I was just thinking how we should actively promote something so wonderful that has been happening and has been showing good results too. It has helped create jobs, cleaned up the land, provided enough food and made the country happier. Its a huge opportunity for "The third world countries" and they should grab it before its too late.

First one

OK, this is the story of how and why I have begun blogging. Things have been,,,well, really static! I might be one of those very few people in Class 12 in all of the country with too much extra time. I literally feel like I have nothing, absolutely nothing! I might want to say a little bit about me or you will have trouble understanding my situation.

So...I study in a very peculiar but interesting school called 'the school' (yes, the name of the school is The School and you're not the first one to laugh at this totally unimaginative naming skills) in Adyar, Chennai. This school is partly the reason for my present situation. See, the school encourages no competition and thus you cant take part in anything that is even remotely competitive, Earlier, when I was in an another school where things are totally the other way around, life was not like lake placid.
Coming back to myself, I possess no great skills but I happen to be good at oratory and used to sing pretty well. I am no gamer to indulge myself in to a world of quest and murder and wars or whatever. So my only way of whiling time is to read, listen to music and of course, social networking.

I would read, watch TV, download episodes, watch movies, scroll through Facebook, laugh at silly, totally unnecessary facts and that was it! I was out of ideas for just getting through the day. Exams came once in a while and it didn't take me herculean effort to get some good marks. And thus, I reached my friends for help but they rarely were free to give advice. They would finish school, go to some engineering tuition and do something else till the end of the day. Then I realized probably I should write some competitive exams and in the pretext of that, go to coaching classes. But somehow the idea lost its spark after its incubation period and so it has been rejected.

Something else I should tell you about myself; I am planning to study mass communication and become a journalist or do something like that. I love writing but don't write much. Don't get me wrong: I enjoy writing, writing makes me happy but at the same time it calls for a bit of dedication and perseverance and my mind very often fails me on that level.  But I had this period of great dubiousness whether I could really make a living out of writing. I know people tell me that you have to just make an effort at starting at something, even a small review of a movie or some such thing but that is exactly the problem. Writing in one's mind is so much easier. The words are strung together beautifully so much so that I reassure myself of all the accolades that will be bestowed upon me in the future. But in front of a computer or paper, its just bzzz....random words...bzzz.

Anyway, it is imperative that I start making an effort to write something, anything and so, this blog. I will keep writing about everything that I find interesting and that will include movies, deep thoughts about the universe, some nasty things that I vehemently disagree about and happy times. So long.