I was recently in Havana, Cuba to write about urban vegetable farm movement for Saveur Magazine.

The Cuban government estimates the urban-area harvest of vegetables, herbs and spices in 2005 including urban farms, intensive gardens, plots of land and family gardens, totaled 4.1 million tons. Raul Castro, before Fidel got sick, spearheaded the push to increase urban farms. When the Cuban government decides to mobilize, it does so in a big way. Their goal is to have every vacant lot in Havana cultivated.

At the age of 75, Nestor Suarez works seven days a week at an organoponico, or urban vegetable garden in the neighborhood of Vedado. I asked him if this was punishment for a misspent youth, and he laughed, then shrugged and said, "It's my work. I like it."

He gestured to the rows of vegetables--beets, spinach, chives, planted in neat beds. As we made our way through the herb garden, he then started explaining the benefits of the herbs to me: siempre viva is for headaches, chamomile helps with skin problems, anise is to give you a strong stomach. Or, as Nestor put it, "Le da animo." It gives you spirit.

We stopped under the shade of fruit trees, where he showed me a passionfruit, still green on the tree, and then a noni fruit, pale yellow and naturally pocked. He picked a few small ripe bananas for me to try.

"If this wasn't a garden, it would be filled with garbage. Instead, all year long we have food for the people," Nestor said, then added the distinctly Cuban phrase, "Tiene que resolver."

"Resolver" has been Cuban's battle cry, chant, groan since the Special Period. It means to find a way to survive, to make the impossible, possible. When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1989, Cuba lost 80 percent of its imports. Known as the "The Special Period," government food rations were cut in half, public buses didn't run, and blackouts rolled through the cities. Hoping to crush the government, the United States tightened the embargo by passing the Cuban Democracy Act (1992) that prevents the docking at a U.S. port of any ship that has docked in Cuba six months prior or that plans to visit Cuba within six months after. This further reduced food and medicine reaching the island.

The scarcity of both imported food and fuel made urban vegetable gardens the most practical solution. Cuba didn't have chemicals to use as insecticides, so they had to use organic methods of pest control.

Corn had been planted around the perimeter of the area. He pulled back a leaf from the plant to show me the blush of aphids gathered. "These keep the aphids off the other vegetables, and then we use ladybugs to control these insects."

I'd love to get this gardening crew up here on a work visa. Senate, Congress? Please