October 18, 2005
Kamloops Daily News



Bill McKibben has seen the future of agriculture, and it is
in Cuba.  It's not the place you would think of looking for
the future, with its aging revolutionary president and
1950's cars.  Cuba seems stuck in the past.

If the U.S. had its way, Cuba would not even exist in its
present form.

It looked as though Cuba was finished after the fall of the
Iron Curtain in 1990.  That's when Cuba lost its lifeline to
Russia, its biggest trading partner.  The USSR was no longer
able to support the little communist country.   This was a
chance for the U.S. to get rid of the thorn in its side. 
All the U.S. had to do was tighten the noose of embargo
around Cuba and wait for it to fall.

The announcement of Cuba's demise was a little premature. 
The New York Times published an article titled "The Last
Days of Castro's Cuba."  "The Cuban dictator has painted
himself into his own corner. Fidel Castro's reign deserves
to end in home-grown failure," intoned the Times.

The U.S. waited for Cuba's collapse.  Without oil, public
transportation shut down.  Cubans rode bikes to work. 
Television shut off early in the evening to save
electricity; movie theaters went dark.

Cubans ran out of food.  In four years, the average caloric
intake dropped precipitously from 3,000 calories a day to
1,900.

Then something unexpected happened.  Instead of growing
sugar for the Russian market, Cubans started growing their
own food anywhere they could - - back yards, large farms,
vacant lots in cities.

On his visit to Cuba, McKibbon discovered that "Cubans have
as much food as they did before the Soviet Union collapsed.
They're still short of meat, and the milk supply remains a
real problem, but their caloric intake has returned to
normal."

Out of necessity, all Cuban foods are organic.  Cuba has
created the one of the world's largest working models of a
semi-sustainable agriculture, one that doesn't rely heavily
on oil, on chemicals, on shipping vast quantities of food
over thousands of kilometers.

A second green revolution has taken place in Cuba.  The rest
of the world is still reaping the benefits of the first
green revolution that saw the industrialization of the food
system that relied on irrigation, oil, and the massive
application of chemicals to counter every problem.

The key to Cuba's green revolution is education.  Anyone who
wants to go to college can.  Starvation may be a motivator,
but knowledge is the key to agriculture.

Suddenly, thousands of students were researching means of
fertilizer reduction by fixing nitrogen in soil through crop
rotation.

Researchers are working at the local Cuban Center for
Reproduction of Entomophages and Entomopathogens.  
Agronomist Jorge Padron is looking for natural bacteria to
control pests.   Chemicals may be easier but their use
ignores the total impact on the growing environment. "Our
work is really about preparing the fields so plants will be
stronger," he says.

Without fuel for tractors, oxen where put into service to
till the land.  A whole industry has built up around them -
- breeding the best oxen for pulling plows, making reins and
yokes, blacksmiths.   There are now about 400,000 oxen in
Cuba.

According to the findings of a number of Cuban Ph. D.
theses, the use of oxen has meant less soil compaction than
with tractors, and the soil is more moist and loamy.

In the rest of the world, where the first green revolution
is still going on, cheap fertilizer and pesticide have
displaced labour and knowledge.  As a result thousands of
farmers go out of business yearly.  Industrial mono-crop
farms swallow up labour intensive family farms.

The price we pay is pollution of groundwater with pesticides
and untreated sewage from animal factory farms.  The amount
of energy required to produce food is high and the pollution
of oil-burning farm machinery is adding to global warming.

Cubans didn't go willingly down the path of the second green
revolution.  It was forced on them by an U.S. embargo and an
authoritarian leader.   Cubans are poor in monetary measures
but rich in health care and education. 

Cuba serves as a reluctant model for the rest of the world
after we run out of cheap oil. They don't feel heroic at
being survivors in the face of overwhelming odds against
them.  They feel "weary, I'd say," says McKibbon.

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