Cuba launches radical five-year agriculture plan

CUBA has launched an ambitious project to surround urban areas with thousands of small farms in an effort to reverse the country's long agricultural decline and ease its chronic economic woes.

The five-year plan calls for growing fruit and vegetables and raising livestock in four-mile-wide rings around 150 of Cuba's cities and towns, with the exception of the capital, Havana.

The island's Communist authorities hope such suburban farming will make food cheaper and more abundant, cut transportation costs, be less reliant on machinery and encourage urban dwellers to leave bureaucratic jobs for more productive labour.

But the government will continue to hold a monopoly on most aspects of food production and distribution, including its control of most of the land.

The pilot programme for the project is being conducted in the central city of Camaguey.