The Worlds Only Sustainable Country

Post by Tom Lewis

http://www.dailyimpact.net/2015/02/09/the-worlds-most-sustainable-country-what-cuba/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+dailyimpact%2FGIfx+%28The+Daily+Impact%29

After 50 years of pretending that Cuba is not there, the United States government this year admitted that, well, it is still there (even Fidel Castro is still there) and we may as well deal with it. This is seen in some quarters as progress. But it is widely assumed that American business will swoop in there and upgrade them from their 1967 DeSoto cars, re-mechanize their agriculture, build fast-food restaurants, and stamp out Communism. It’s what we do.

What we should do is recognize that Cuba confronted in 1991 precisely the kind of Apocalypse that looms before us today — the sudden loss of external inputs to the economy — things such as oil, heavy equipment, cars, and did we mention oil? — and handled it. We have more to learn from them than there is likely time to learn before we are in the soup, but we should do the best we can, because there is no better example in the world for meeting and besting such a crisis.

The World Wildlife Fund in its 2006 Sustainability Index Report cited Cuba as the only sustainable country in the world.

To comprehend the magnitude of that achievement, and its significance for our world today, we need to go back to 1990. Cuba then was the very model of industrial agriculture, turning most of its land over to vast monocultures of sugar cane, applying oceans of imported oil to till it, spray it (Cuba at the time used more pesticides than the United States), harvest it and ship it to the Soviet Union in return for oil and food. Most of what was grown in Cuba was exported; most of what was eaten in Cuba was imported. When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, Cuba, under embargo by the United States, had no market for its agricultural products and no way to pay for imported oil or food.

An industrial country wakes up one morning to no more oil. Just like that.

Motivated now by survival, not by profit, Cubans did what smart people have been telling us all to do for decades now. They stopped wresting cash from their punished land and started to heal it in order to have enough food to live. It was tough, starting from scratch, with the crisis already upon them. In the decade that followed the average Cuban adult lost 20 pounds.

They brought in experts in Permaculture from Australia and launched a national drive toward diversified, organic, polycultural, restorative agriculture. They did not do this because they wanted to save “the environment,” they did it because they wanted to save themselves. And that is why they succeeded. By the end of that first decade the average Cuban was getting 2600 calories and more than 68 grams of protein, an amount considered “sufficient” by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. By 2006 average caloric intake was up to 3356 calories.

A lot of this food was produced not in the countryside (requiring transport to the cities) but in urban gardens, where food was grown and consumed in the same neighborhood. By 2002, 35,000 acres of urban gardens produced 3.4 million tons of food. In Havana, 90% of the city’s fresh produce came from local urban farms and gardens, all organic. In 2003, more than 200,000 Cubans were employed in urban agriculture. In 2003, Cuba had reduced its use of Diesel fuel by more than 50%, synthetic fertilizers by 90%, and chemical insecticides by 83%.

Cuba’s achievements, in the face of exactly the kind of test we will soon face, are nothing short of awe-inspiring. Our obvious course, now that we are resuming a normal relationship, would be to commend them on what they have done and to invite teachers and consultants to come here to America and show our farmers how to stop destroying the earth and start feeding our people sustainably.

Author: Roy

80 year old retired AF officer with VA combat related disability, educated beyond my intelligence with three at taxpayer expense Degrees. I am a Deist (hedged Atheist) who believes man made god in his own image and what we call god is what I call mother nature. I agree with Bertrand Russel that with all these different religions they all cannot be right but they can all be wrong, same applies to economic theories.

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Welshman
Welshman

Roy,

Maybe Cuba should start a tourist industry based on learning how to survive when TSHTF.

Stucky

A few weeks ago we had a Cuba post, and I said some nice things about that country. Then several folks got out their 12-gauge shotguns, shoved it up my asshole, and pulled the trigger, metaphorically speaking.

So, it will be interesting to read the responses today. Me? I’m keeping my mouth shut.

I would love to visit Cuba, if only to see all the vintage classic cars.
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IndenturedServant

I feel sorry for the poor bastards. By the time the bankers and big business get through taking everything they have of value and enslaving them with debt they’ll be just like us.

I’ll bet a bunch of them get high level govt jobs here in the USA teaching us how to properly behave and show respect for dear leader in a brutal dictatorship at the re-education camps.

Bea Lever
Bea Lever

First of all, who is Roy?

“build fast food restaurants, and stamp out communism. It’s what we do”.

Build fast food restaurants, yes we do, not a good thing. Stamp out communism, no. There are more communist countries now than before we started the “stamp out communism” thing.

Cuba is a plantation complete with slaves owned outright by multinationals and the criminal cartel. It is their wet dream of how it should be. IS is prolly right that they will be teaching us to be good slaves.

bb

Roy the only thing Cuba achieved was third world poverty for most of its population. If The United Soviet socialist republics had not given them billions of dollars in aid every year their economy would have collapsed.Remember socialism is for the people not the Ruling class of any nation. Fidel Castro has lived like a king for the past 50+years while regular Cubans wasted away in the fields.

KaD
KaD

I think this is the number ONE thing that needs doing right now-transition from corporate agribusiness back to localized agriculture, small and medium size family farms and urban agriculture, and ‘victory’ gardens, the small gardens every household had during wartime. We need to be homesteading people again. And the goobermint is standing in the way as usual, all the way.

Bea Lever
Bea Lever

Bravo bb

bb nailed it in a pithy coherent way.

Bea Lever
Bea Lever

Roy

I am a short timer here at TBP, can’t say I have ever seen you post before. Don’t get all bunged up that I asked the question.

Your closing line made me chuckle. If I were a betting person, I would bet that Cuba will be built up into a glittering Babylon within the next ten years. Prior to Vegas, Cuba was really something to behold with clubs and hotels that made NYC green with envy. Truly a glamorous place.

Bea Lever
Bea Lever

Stucky

No shit, Cuba is the treasure trove of classic cars. Would like to go on that trek with you just to see byways full of vintage chrome and steel beauty.

Overthecliff
Overthecliff

I don,t think they have any 1967 deSoto cars 1957 is more like it. Are all the facts in this article that good?

Llpoh

Venezuela cannot send them free oil anymore. So Obongo rushes in and legitimizes them again. Go figure.

If the goal was to break them, the chance appeared like manna from heaven. So why was the embargo in place, anyway? That will teach those dirty commies.

Didius Julianus
Didius Julianus

Roy said:

“The Laws of Nature are 1 Survival 2.Propigation, all life except humans follow these Laws. Some humans who have a different definition of survival based on ”’mysticism” and magic and believe in an after life readily consent to Government mandated altruism, conscription, taxation and all government mandates restricting personal liberty.”

Well, what about all the atheists who follow “Dear Leader” to their oblivion? Ever wonder why true Christians are perceived with hostility by many governments and many non-believers?

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