This is the title of a recent book by Bharat Mansata, published by Earthcare Books of Kolkata. Can you guess which country it is about? Here are some clues:-
- It used to be famous for sugar and tobacco;
- Beginning in 1989, it achieved a complete reversal of agricultural policies, going from heavily mechanized industrial methods with vast chemical input, to a system of almost entirely organic farming;
- In 1999 the Swedish Parliament presented its Organic Farming Association with the Right Livelihood Award, or ‘alternative Nobel Prize’;
- by the end of the millennium the daily food availability per person began to exceed the daily average recommended by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization.
- every available inch of the land in major cities is dedicated to food production in what are called ‘organoponicos’.
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That’s right: Cuba! If we want to understand what is bound to happen in only a few short years, as fossil fuels decline and become prohibitively expensive, we need to study the Cuban model.
PS See Garden Organic for an example of an’ organoponico’ in England.
