Humberto Ríos Labrada is the first Cuban to win the Goldman Prize, which is considered to be the “Green Nobel” [see previous post Cuba’s ‘seed man’ wins global environmental prize]. Ríos believes that “science has to be for country people and not just for scientists.”
Ríos has achieved “nearly biblical” crop increases in the span of ten years. He started his agro-diversity and participatory plant improvement project with 25 growers and now there are more than 50 thousand. From the scientific community, a team of six people initially supported his effort. Today, more than ten research institutions are involved.
The 47-year-old agricultural expert explains, “Traditionally speaking, scientists are the ones who make the decision as to the kind of seed and the kind of crop to be planted in a given zone to improve the harvest. What I did was following: All that genetic diversity which was in the institutions, I made it available to the farmers. Based on it, they chose the types of beans they were most interested in and started to create their own experimental networks.”
Ríos says that “In the 80’s, Cuba was the Latin American country that applied the most fertilizers, and the one with the greatest number of tractors in the region, even more than in the USSR.” He advocates a transition from the present model of industrial agriculture, which he considers to be unsustainable. The Cuban government has made some moves in this direction, encouraging food production by leasing idle plots of land, decentralizing decisions, reducing bureaucratic procedures, and encouraging the use of methods other than chemicals for agriculture.
“I think Cuba is presently at an important moment of strategic change in agriculture and all indicates that these ideas can result in more and more varied food on the basis of the participation by growers in Cuban science,” says Ríos, who is also a researcher with the Instituto Nacional de Ciencias Agropecuarias [National Institute for Agricultural Sciences].
Goldman Prize Director Lorrae Rominger said the selection of Ríos demonstrated the importance given to sustainable farming. Created in 1990 by the U.S. civil and philanthropic leaders Richard N. Goldman and his wife, Rhoda H. Goldman, the prize has gone to 139 people from 79 countries, selected on the basis of nominations sent by a world network of ecological organizations and individuals.
Born in eastern Cuba of peasant background (“my grandfather was quite an expert on plants”), ecologically-minded Ríos holds a doctorate in agricultural sciences and animal breeding, in addition to being a composer and Cuban folk singer.
For full article, see http://www.cubanow.net/pages/articulo.php?sec=38&t=2&item=8487
