In the present day United States we are seeing certain aspects of our economy collapsing. Fuel prices have recently risen by over 100%, food prices have gone up, and the cost of just about everything has climbed northward faster than we have seen in many decades. Prices of some products and services have risen faster than ever. Many thousands of people are losing their jobs as corporations cut costs. People are struggling to keep food on their tables. Many people have lost their homes. Unemployment claims are shooting skyward. College tuition has risen, college funding has been slashed, and enrollment has dropped. The U.S. is spending more on prisons than on schools.

 

Americans can learn a lesson by looking to Cuba and considering how the people in that country responded to their economic collapse.

 

For many years the Soviet Union was supporting Cuba by purchasing Cuba-grown cane sugar for excessive prices, and often exchanging sugar for food, fuel, and other goods.

 

When the cold war ended and the wall fell in the 1980s, the Cuban economy collapsed with the disintegration of the Soviet Union. Most of Cuba’s food and fuel had been imported. Suddenly they had less than one-third of what had become their normal flow of food, fuel, and cash. They couldn’t afford imported goods. Many had no food, and some starved.

 

That is when Cubans got busy. They turned to home gardening, planting food in every available space. The government gave away plots of land to people who promised to use the land to grow food. Some people created food gardens on their rooftops, and on the roofs of commercial buildings. Plots of land that had become trash dumps were cleaned up and turned into neighborhood farms. The lawns of government buildings, schools, senior housing centers, and apartment complexes were turned into culinary gardens. The Ministry of Agriculture tore up its lawn and turned it into a culinary garden.

 

From the mid-eighties to the mid-nineties, Cuban food production increased several hundred percent. Farmers’ markets in Cuba are now filled with a variety of homegrown foods and produce from local organic farms. Fresh food improved the health of Cubans. Malnutrition has vanished as food has become plentiful. The infant mortality rate has decreased.

 

While Cuba still imports food products, many Cubans have no question about where they will get their next meal, they simply turn to the culinary gardens in their yards, in pots on their patios, on their rooftops, or in their community gardens.

 

Home gardening and localizing their economy benefited Cubans in ways they never considered. It saved people money and built strong communities that are less reliant on stores, distant corporations, foreign products, and foreign fuel. Pollution has decreased as economies have become localized, reducing packaging and fuel use. Money largely stays within the communities, and less of it is needed. 

 

Because the people could not afford to purchase chemical fertilizers, they naturally learned how to grow food without chemicals, thus becoming organic farmers and gardeners by default. They compost their kitchen, restaurant, and food market scraps into garden soil, returning nutrients to the land. Today, 85% of the food in Cuba is organically grown.

 

Today in the U.S. nearly all kitchen, restaurant, and food market scraps are not composted. Instead, they are sent to landfills and trash dumps.

 

Today, most U.S. food is grown using toxic farming chemicals that pollute the land, water, air, wildlife, and people.

 

Today, most children in the U.S. know little or nothing about growing food. Schools that do have gardening programs struggle to survive under budgetary cuts and lack of funding.

 

Today, nearly everyone in the U.S. relies on stores and restaurants to supply their food, which creates a tremendous amount of waste. The average meal in the U.S. travels over 1,400 miles from farm to plate. This uses enormous amounts of fuel and other resources for transporting, packaging, and marketing the food products. Compounding the problem is the issue of discarded food. In 2007, U.S. supermarkets threw away an estimated $20 billion worth of food. This includes food that is used for display rather than for sale, food that expires, and food that arrives spoiled or damaged. Even after purchasing food, many people end up throwing as much as half of it away after it expires, is never used, or they order more food than they can eat at a restaurant.

 

The amount of food being imported into the U.S. continues to increase as the population grows and fewer people are involved in growing food. From 1973 to 2008, U.S. food imports rose 78%. The vast majority of that food was grown using synthetic farming chemicals. Some of the chemicals, including fertilizers, pesticides, insecticides, fungicides, and miticides, are so toxic that the U.S. will not allow them to be used within its borders. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, imported foods are three times more likely to carry infectious diseases.

 

People often think of Cuba as a shutoff country living in the dark ages. But their healthcare system, schools, libraries, and food production are all far better than nearly every country.

 

Cuba is also advanced in alternative fuel sources. When the Soviet Union collapsed, so did Cuba’s energy imports. Suddenly they couldn't afford to run their cars, tractors, trucks, and bus systems. People started riding bikes, growing foods, and turned to alternative fuel sources, including solar energy, wind turbines, and biofuels.

 

To reduce electricity use, the Cuban government gave away many thousands of compact fluorescent light bulbs. Today they are turning to LED lights, which last longer, use less energy, and don’t contain the toxic mercury that is in compact fluorescent bulbs. They are also beginning to use hybrid solar lighting, which uses a reflective dish and fiber optic cables to bring sunlight into homes and businesses, reducing the use of electricity.

 

There is no combination of alternative fuels that can sustain the current U.S. use of fuels and energy in an environmentally safe manner. But there are combinations of alternative ways of living that can transform our neighborhoods into more sustainable human communities.

 

Every step people take toward a more sustainable culture makes a difference in breaking away from the Earth-trashing toxemian culture. Localizing our foods; growing culinary gardens; composting our kitchen, restaurant, food market, and food manufacturing waste; supporting organic family farms; cutting back on car culture; riding bikes; walking; building monorail systems instead of freeways and subways; using green products; legalizing industrial hemp farming; reducing electricity use and shutting down coal-fired power plants; using cloth bags instead of paper or plastic; reducing our use of petro-plastic and other petroleum products; using biodegradable botanical soaps; planting fruiting trees; planting and protecting trees and forests; refusing to pollute our land, rivers, lakes, oceans, and air; and protecting our environment and wildlife by turning away from petroleum, coal, and natural gas holds promise for a more sustainable and healthful planet.

 

In the 1940s Americans planted culinary “victory gardens” to become more independent. By doing this Americans produced nearly 40 percent of their food during that time of war. Today, one of the most effective ways of reducing our carbon footprint is to grow our own food. Because of this, it is time to revive the home food gardening movement, never to let it end.

 

Relying on corporations, markets, and restaurants to supply most of our food fails us. The most basic need is for food. Today most Americans have never grown any of their food, and have instead relied on stores and restaurants for their supply. They don’t know what most of the food plants look like in their natural environment. Many people hold an attitude that growing a food garden is something beneath them. They have no idea what they are missing out on. Schools should teach how to grow food, and parents should teach their children. Every household should be involved in some aspect of culinary gardening – be it growing food in pots on patios, porches, and rooftops, or replacing lawns with food gardens. All food scraps from every household, restaurant, food market, and food-processing plant should be turned into compost to grow local culinary gardens.

 

It should no longer be okay and normal to completely rely on corporations for our most basic needs. It is clear that doing so weakens us, gives up our power, wastes resources, and damages every form of life on Earth.

 

The way the Cuban people responded to a rapidly collapsing economy by localizing their economy holds lessons for all of us, no matter where we live.

 

Let us all be involved in transforming our way of living to be sustainable, Earth-friendly, and healthful.

 

Grow an organic food garden.

 

© 2009 John McCabe