The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil, di Megan Quinn

<div style="text-align: justify;">Since
the early 1990s, an urban agriculture movement has swept through Cuba,
putting this capital city of 2.2 million on a path toward
sustainability. A small group of Australians assisted in this
grass-roots effort, coming to this Caribbean island nation in 1993 to
teach permaculture, a system based on sustainable agriculture which
uses far less energy. So Cubans started to grow local organic produce
out of necessity, developed bio-pesticides and bio-fertilizers as
petrochemical substitutes, and incorporated more fruits and vegetables
into their diets. Cubans are also replacing petroleum-fed machinery
with oxen, and their urban agriculture reduces food transportation
distances. Today an estimated 50 percent of Havana's vegetables come
from inside the city, while in other Cuban towns and cities urban
gardens produce from 80 percent to more than 100 percent of what they
need. Since going from petrochemical intensive agricultural production
to organic farming and gardening, Cuba now uses 21 times less pesticide
than before the Special Period. They have accomplished this with their
large-scale production of bio-pesticides and bio-fertilizers, exporting
some of it to other Latin American countries.<br></div><i>Fonte di informazione:</i> «The Organic Advantage», n. 56, 15 marzo