I knew nothing at all about farming when I started work,” confesses 72-year-old José Luís Estrada Rojas, as he weeds radish beds in a state-owned organic gardening operation, Organopónico Casino Deportivo, on the outskirts of Havana. After spending 44 years as a railway guard, José Luís began work in the 1.2-acre (0.5-ha) organopónico in 1994, the worst year of Cuba’s post-Soviet economic crisis. He has become expert at making organic compost—the lifeblood of the 72 raised beds, each 154 feet (47m) long and four feet (1.20m) across. The workers here, many of them retired, grow radishes, spinach, cucumbers, lettuce, carrots, cabbages, spring onions and other vegetables without using chemicals. The vegetables are sold to residents of the area... [Log in to read more]