Peak Oil? Urban Farms? Cuba's Been There, Done It

Last year all of us were afforded a frightening glimpse of how expensive fuel can trigger a global food crisis. And then, when zooming oil prices tumbled again (for now), causing food commodity prices to drop (for now), our news media moved on.

But I didn’t. I became interested in Cuba as an example of how to adapt when the next, similar crisis comes — and stays.

Peak oil hit the island with a crash when the Soviet

Union

imploded in 1989. A food system built on false economic pretenses — subsidized oil and fertilizers from Russia which also paid inflated prices for Cuban sugar — suddenly disappeared. So the country with the most industrialized agricultural system in Latin America, and a farming strategy built on monocrop exports, was left to fend for itself. It didn’t help when the U.S. government tightened its trade embargo in 1992.

With their export crops out of favour and Soviet tractors rusting in the fields for lack of fuel and spare parts, the big state farms couldn’t pick up the slack.

The Tyee