The Cuba Equation: Can an Island be an Island in Today's Economy?

Every urban agriculture enthusiast has derived a bit of that optimism from Cuba. Granted, the government leaves much to be desired, but what has happened in regards to food production is nothing short of amazing. Pre-1980s/90s, Cuba had some of the finest agricultural machinery available in the world, right in line with communist theory- that agricultural equipment was what saved the peasants from hard day labor and allowed them to do more academic and socialist activities that would put everyone at more or less the same class level. But then in the early 1990s when Cuba had no support left from the fallen Eastern bloc nations and the US enacted a rigid embargo on goods from Cuba, Cuba practically drowned in its isolation. As Bill McKibben writes in the Cuba Diet, Cuba became a real island..."not just surrounded by water, but something much more rare: an island outside the international economic system," in which everyone waited for its collapse. Which, in some ways, it did. Without oil, infrastructure collapsed. Without tools, entire industries and markets collapsed. Without food, the elder and weak collapsed. And that seems to be around teh point in time (mid 1990s), that innovation began taking place. People began to produce food on whatever land they could. They consulted the hungry elders on how to grow things and produced food on top of buildings, inside apartment buildings, and effectively staved off mass starvation and death. Today, over 115,000 people are employed by the metropolitian farming system.

While most Cubans still feel unfairly treated and cut-off from the world, their food system seems to be the most ecologically undisruptive in the world. When free trade hits Cuba, no one knows if it will keep its roots or turn the way of the world in industrialization (all over again...what lessons would be learned?!) of food. Maybe, in the face of oil shortages and environmental/social/economic damage done and attributed to malpractice in agribusiness in the developed world we could learn a little something from Cuba.