Sustainable Agriculture and Food Security in an Era of Oil Scarcity

Minimising the harm to biodiversity of producing more food globally

“…Where such practices are introduced and evaluated with the explicit aim of increasing and maintaining long term yields -''sustainable intensification'' -they can contribute towards more sustainable agriculture, but there should be no assumption that they will improve the value of farmland for biodiversity. More fundamental changes, such as substituting fossil fuel with labour, for example, will depend on economic and social contexts (Wright, 2008).…”

Degrowth and public health in Cuba: lessons from the past?

“…After 1959, about eighty percent of cultivable land became state property, mostly organized into vast agro-industrial complexes, which required huge amounts of imported fuel, machinery, spare parts, herbicides, pesticides and fertilizers as well as financial subsidies. By 1989 only 43% of the land was cultivated for local food needs and food imports accounted for 55% of calories, 50% of protein and 90% of fat consumed on the island (Wright, 2009;Burchardt, 2001b;Funes, 2002). While the production model remained the same after 1959, the revolution resulted in a profound change in food policies.…”

“…Gradually, Cuba developed a problem of overrather than under-consumption. In 1973, a study in the Marianao district of Havana found 20.2 percent of children in day-care centers to be obese (Valdés;Wright, 2009).…”

Archaeology and Contemporary Dynamics for More Sustainable, Resilient Cities in the Peri-Urban Interface

“…Friedmann and Weaver ( 1979 : 206) highlighted the importance of sound 'political leadership' for such approaches, remarking that 'agropolitan development is thus more likely to evolve in response to particular historical opportunities than as a result of technocratic planning'. This was the case in Cuba during the 1990s, where reactive planning policies were introduced to address sustainable agriculture and food security in an era of oil scarcity (Wright, 2009 ). Without such political leadership, success was likely to be limited: 'The political choice, then, would seem to be between planning for equality and political self-determination at the lowest levels of territorial governance or planning for inequality and political autocracy' (Friedmann 1985 : 155).…”

“…The sustainable agriculture and food security lessons that were learnt in Cuba during the early 1990s' era of oil scarcity provide the classic example of this phenomenon. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union and subsequent cessation of subsidised imports of Soviet oil and oil-based agrochemicals, Cuban farmers could no longer irrigate and fertilise their fi elds as previously practised during the subsided Soviet era (Wright 2009 ). The effects of these two agricultural constraints provide a possible foretaste of climatic-induced events, for example the effects of limited irrigation are similar to those of increased rainwater variability (no longer having the right amount of water at the right time on the fi eld).…”