The Sustainable Solution

This week in Sustainable Agriculture we started off by learning about the nationwide agricultural transformation of Cuba following the collapse of the Soviet Union. In the movie Power of Community: Cuba, we learned that after the Soviet Union collapsed, Cuba experienced a 34% drop in GDP and could no longer afford to continue their practice of conventional agriculture that required heavy amounts of expensive inputs. Cuba was forced to find a new way to grow food for a hungry country, and they did so in an amazing way as their transition to more sustainable methods of growing food resulted in a solution to their food crisis. Without the help of mechanized industrial farming, more Cubans had to join the farming force and help manage the farms across the country. Cubans found ways to grow food in all areas, even in city streets and complexes that previously would never have been considered reasonable areas to grow food. Although it initially seemed that Cuba was destined for years of poverty and hunger, their adoption of sustainable agriculture actually was very beneficial for their country as the food became much less expensive to grow and because it was being grown in all sorts of areas across the country, the cost of transporting the food was drastically cut.

- Dean Watson.