The first phase of transitioning to agroecology involves input substitution. Farmers apply compost, manure or worm casting in place of nitrogen fertilizer and use organic pesticides in place of chemical ones. Cuban scientists worked to identify native beneficial insects, fungi and bacteria that prey on local pests. The island has hundreds of stations that produce these beneficials and provide them at a low cost to Cuban farmers. Whereas a chemical pesticide kills all bugs, good and bad, beneficial organisms only prey on the pests, leaving the rest of the ecosystem intact.
When agroecology advances beyond mere input substitution, farmers begin mimicking nature in order to create healthy agroecosystems that increase food production while preventing many pest infestations in the first place. Simple techniques like crop rotation, mulching, planting cover crops and intercropping (planting more than one species of crop together) can work wonders to increase yield while decreasing pest damage. For example, Cubans have found they can nearly double yields by intercropping tomatoes with corn and cassava or by intercropping cucumbers and radishes.
A common model in Cuba is the "organipónico," an often urban farm made up of long, narrow raised beds filled with a mix of soil and composted manure or another organic material. Often, the beds are intercropped, growing lettuce within a border of radishes or cucumbers beneath a shade canopy of pole beans. At the edges of each bed, Cubans grow sorghum, corn, chives, basil, or marigolds as barriers to pests. The setup of these organipónicos and other Cuban agroecological farms is so simple that it can be hard to imagine that the Cubans are practicing cutting edge science -- but they are!
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