An alternate title for this, my first Daily Kos diary, is "What can we learn from Cuban low-petroleum agriculture?"
Cuba, a country that has faced economic hardship as a result of punitive, longstanding economic sanctions from the U.S. and an end to subsidies from the defunct Eastern Bloc and Soviet Union, as well as increases in oil prices and other costs affecting the world at large, can in some ways serve as a laboratory for other countries that have not yet faced these problems so severely but probably will later.
I believe we can learn valuable lessons from Cuba's experience with organic agriculture, if we are willing to drop some of our assumptions.
Many Americans assume that organic crops are expensive and cannot feed a large population. Cuba's experience seems to give the lie to that assumption:
[A]fter the collapse of the Soviet Union, the oil supply rapidly dried up, and, almost overnight, Cuba faced a major food crisis.[...]
With no oil-based fertilizers or pesticides, farmers had to turn to natural and organic replacements.[...]
"We don't spray any chemicals. We only spray biological means like bastilos - a bacteria and fungus to kill the pests. And we use repellent plants like marigolds to keep away the pests."[...]
And the methods work. Lettuce, tomatoes, peppers, squash, sweet potatoes, spinach herbs and many other crops are grown in huge quantities and sold cheaply.[...]
Folks, they are growing many of these crops right in Havana. They are 90% self-sufficient in fruits and vegetables, and their diet is just a bit lower in calories and healthier than Britain's (and quite obviously, ours as well).
And these quotes are not from an article in Granma. They're from "The vegetable gardeners of Havana" on BBC News.
As Cuban agricultural researcher, Fernando Funes says, we won't have oil forever, and conventional farming is very harmful to the environment and human health. While I think alternative-fuel-powered tractors are more likely in the U.S. than ox-powered plowing, the rest of the current Cuban agriculture methods may well be readily applicable to conditions here.