• This information comes from
“Peak oil preview: North Korea & Cuba”
by Dale Jiajun Wen in the Summer 2006 issue of Yes!
(PO Box 10818, Bainbridge Island WA 98110):
With the collapse of the Soviet
Union in 1989, both Cuba and North Korea were cut
off from the “technology, imported machines,
petroleum, chemical fertilizers and pesticides that
had provided food for their populations. The two
countries handled this crisis in different ways.
“Before 1989 North Korea
was self-sufficient in grain production.”
But a 1998 report “from the joint UN Food
and Agriculture Organization and World Food Program
observed: ‘The highly mechanized … North
Korean agriculture faces a serious constraint as
about four-fifths of motorized farm machinery and
equipment is out of use due to obsolescence and
lack of spare parts and fuel. …In fact, because
of non-availability of trucks, harvested paddy has
been seen left on the fields in piles for long periods.’
North Korea failed to change in response to the
crisis. Devotion to the status quo precipitated
the food shortages that continue to this day.”
Before 1989 Cuba’s agriculture
“was geared towards production of sugar for
export. After the Soviet collapse and the tightening
of the U.S. embargo, Cuba lost 85 percent of its
trade, and its fossil-fuel-based agricultural inputs
were reduced by more than 50 percent. At the height
of the resulting food crisis, the daily ration was
one banana and two slices of bread per person in
some places. Cuba responded with a national effort
to restructure agriculture. Cuban agriculture now
consists of a diverse combination of organic farming,
permaculture, urban gardens, animal power, and biological
fertilizing and pest control. On a national level,
Cuba now has probably the most ecological and socially
sensitive agriculture in the world.”
The article points out that the
whole world now faces peak oil which will “shake
the very foundation of the global food system.”
We can choose whether we handle it like North Korea
or like Cuba. “Not only politicians, but also
ordinary people need to consider the question: should
we try to shore up the system and carry on business
as usual for as long as possible, or should we take
preemptive measures to avoid disaster?”
• There are two excellent articles
that trace the connections between seemingly diverse
world challenges:
The first is “Subsidized
Theft” by Craig Sams, which appears in the
May/June 2006 issue of Resurgence magazine and is
based on the Martin Radcliffe Lecture 2006. The
author briefly traces the farming history of his
family, from 1842 up to the present:
“Uncle Floyd’s son now farms those 625
acres as part of an expanded total of 1,600 acres—all
farmed with just one assistant. Last year he lost
$40,000 on sales of $300,000 but ended up with a
net farm income of $110,000, thanks to a hefty $150,000
subsidy from the US government. So from Thomas Jefferson’s
dream of a rural democracy, where every self-sufficient
and prosperous family had a small farm or business,
we have reached—in three generations—a
corporate state where a viable family farmer needs
1,600 acres, a lot of machinery and GM crops and
still operates at a huge annual loss that has to
be made up by subsidies.” He then traces the
history of subsidies and connects them with corporate
giants, “the health of the global economy,
the stability of our climate and human health.”
And as for subsidies causing world poverty: “US
farmers grow maize at a cost of 6 cents per pound.
A Mexican farmer can grow maize at a cost of 4 cents
per pound. … But the world market price is
set at 3 cents per pound on the Chicago Board of
Trade on the basis of subsidized US farmers. …
In the cruel world of subsidized agriculture, the
so-called inefficient Mexican farmers go out of
business trying to compete. … In recent years
100,000 Mexican farmers have been driven off the
land, denied access to their domestic market by
US imports.”
The second article is “Going
Local on a Global Scale” by Kirsten Schwind,
which appears in Just Change (Bonnie Flaws, editor, justchange@dev-zone.org; www.dev-zone.org).
Although its focus is on food, connections are made
between globalized food and climate change, energy
use, rural poverty, and the erosion of health, diversity
and cultural heritage. The article sums up by saying:
“The successes of a cornucopia of community
food programs have already demonstrated how local
food can foster robust local development, improve
food security and nutrition, build community, and
support productive family farms. Going local can
also be a part of the answer to reversing global
environmental degradation and greatly reducing rural
poverty.”
• The May 2006 issue of
Vanity Fair has an article, “While Washington
Slept,” by Mark Hertsgaard. The long text
includes Queen Elizabeth’s concerns about
global warming, a detailed background of the US’s
downplay of the issue, a hard look at possible consequences
of continued melting of the Greenland icesheet as
well as its counterpart in Antartica, and some possible
changes that need to be made (although the general
tone is that we have waited so long to start that
we cannot avoid climate change). By far the most
impressive part of the article is the computer-generated
photos and maps of how some of our better-known
coastal cities might look with rises in the sea
level ranging from 3 to 80 feet.
• This
is from apprentice Margo Royer-Miller: “Until
October of 2004, all I knew about peat was that
it is in a lot of commercial potting soils and it
is used as a fuel. My twin sister was volunteering
in Northern Ireland, so we visited her and traveled
around the island. One of our stops was a peat bog.
Not only was it a beautiful place, but they had
a terrific education center there also. I learned
about the ecological and environmental consequences
of peat extraction and burning, things I had not
considered before.
“ Remember all the artifacts
that had been found in the bog as they extracted
bricks. Bogs are rich with cultural history, because
they take thousands of years to form. It is a unique
ecosystem that is disappearing quickly as we extract
the peat much faster than it is replenished. In
some countries, all peat bogs have been eliminated
(Poland and the Netherlands). There are a lot of
rare and endangered species that live in the bogs.
At the museum we went through they had pictures
and placards of many insects and butterflies. I
also know that the burning of peat, because of its
makeup, releases a lot of carbon dioxide into the
air. If you’re interested in learning more,
the Irish Peatland Conservation Council has a terrific
website, www.ipcc.ie.
If you click on Facts and Information there are
some terrific factsheets.” |