More Food For Thought  

Here's another article on Cuba's oil-scarcity prompted drive towards organic agriculture - this one from Gardener's Supply.

For several years I have been hearing about another revolution in Cuba. This time it involved farming and the food system. For much of the 1990's small organic farms were providing increasing amounts of Cuba's food. They were responding to the economic emergency of 1989-90 when the Soviet bloc began collapsing and Cuba lost its main source of foreign exchange and half of the food its 11 million citizens relied on.

During the early 1990's imports of agricultural machinery, fertilizer, pesticides and other needed inputs for Cuba's industrialized agricultural system (producing mostly sugar for export) stopped abruptly. Cuban agriculture had to change or the people would starve. And change needed to happen fast.

Fertilizers, pesticides, equipment and other farm inputs needed to come from local sources and harvests had to feed Cubans, not sweeten desserts in East Germany. It was like corporate farms in California or Iowa suddenly having to switch from chemically-dependent monocultures feeding Manhattan to compost-fed, diversified crops feeding Fresno or Dubuque.

Then in 1999 I read an article in The New Internationalist about a surprising additional innovation in this latest Cuban revolution: Organiponicos. Organiponicos are organic farms and gardens of a few thousand square feet to several acres located in urban areas. Vacant lots, old parking lots, abandoned building sites, spaces between roads, any available site (even rooftops and balconies) were taken over by thousands of new urban farmers trying to feed themselves and make some money.

In Havana alone 30,000 residents tend 8,000 community gardens and small farms producing vegetables, fruit, eggs, medicinal plants, honey, and such livestock as rabbits and poultry. These urban farmers produce 30% of the city's vegetables and perishable food. And all this produce is organic because chemical pesticides for agriculture are not allowed within the city limits.

TreeHugger also has an article on where people in the US can find organic farmers and farmers markets called "local harvest".

This is one website that we use all the time to find various things, but when the tip came in from Guillermo P. we thought it was time to write a little something about it. Local Harvest lists thousands of small farms all over the U.S. that sell directly to the consumer. With the map that’s provided, you can locate farmers' markets, family farms, locally grown produce, grass-fed meats, and other sources of sustainably grown food.

And lastly, another post from TreeHugger about the selective breeding of "super foods".

The University of Adelaide’s Agricultural Research Institute is developing “super crops”. Food with increased nutrients or vitamins built in. The Philippines have already benefited from rice with extra iron and South Africa has seen a Vitamin A boosted sweet potato. Peru might get a fortified potato and Northern Indian a supercharged wheat for Chapatis. What makes this program different from many we hear about is that there is zilch, nada Genetic Modified Organisms (GMOs) involved. No, to assist the estimated 800 million people starving daily, and 24 mil who die from malnutrition yearly, the Australian scientists are simply using ages-old selective breeding techniques and they want the seeds to be available to poor subsistence farmers to store for future planting seasons.

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