Movie Review: The Power of Community:How Cuba Survived Peak Oil

The documentary The Power of Community:How Cuba Survived Peak Oil looks at how Cubans survived their "peak oil," i.e., when fuel oil imports were cut off after the fall of the Soviet Union. 

With no imports of fuel oil, power cuts lasted up to 16 hours a day, and they had no choice but to abruptly change. Power for everyday necessities like water pumping for indoor plumbing and refrigeration was at best non reliable and at worst non existent. They had a food scarcity, and the average Cuban lost 20 lbs by 1994.

 

Here are some inspiring ways Cuba dealt with their "peak oil" experience.

Transportation:

• The government imported bicycles, which were not a part of the culture, and citizens had to learn how to use them. 
• They developed mass transit service overnight with creative solutions like old trucks with covers acting as buses.
• People in small towns turned to horses and mules for transportation.

Agriculture: 

• In the early days while in crisis mode, they had to have food distribution so the wealthy did not just hoard what was for sale, and relied on “survival agriculture” using no chemical inputs (which were not available).
• There was a drastic effort to convert every inch of arable land to agriculture. Therefore, urban gardening flourished. It's a growing sector of economy, creating jobs (organic farming is more labor intensive, therefore there are more jobs).
• Farmers now among the highest paid professionals
• Many kiosks are located throughout city that sell food grown using urban agriculture
• 80-100% of food in smaller towns is provided by urban agriculture
• Working against nature, in conventional agriculture, you have to use huge amounts of energy. They strive to create a “food forest”—self sustaining like a forest, and then you pick the produce as you would forage in the woods.

Energy:

• In some rural areas, it is less expensive to use solar panels than to connect to grid. More than 2,000 rural schools have supplied with solar panels. 
• The use of solar hot water is an example of variety of small solutions used across the country.
• Cuba imported fuel oil before the crisis, since the quality of their crude oil is poor. Now, crop waste like sugar is used to produce electricity. During harvest, 3-4 months out of the year, 30% of energy is from biomass sources.

The average Cuban consumes 1/8 of the energy of the average American, but their infant morality rate and lifespan are about equal. Obviously Cuba is very different from us, politically, geographically, culturally, and in the climate. But this movie provides great examples of baby steps and grassroots action, adding up and make a difference. Humans are extremely adaptable to change. Because of embargo, everything has to happen from the inside, making this a fascinating isolated, controlled experiment in how to survive peak oil, when it comes for the rest of us. 

See our other blogs on urban agriculture and Seattle's regulations & incentives.

Your local farmer could be YOU!

Urban farming, or at least the idea of urban farming, is very of the moment. From the Obamas' Organic Garden at the White House to plans to fill the empty blighted spaces in Detroit with agriculture, the cultural zeitgeist of local, organic, accessible food is hard to avoid, and for good reason. Local agriculture reduces the environmental impacts of transportation (some statistics assert that the average food item travels 1,500 miles to get to our tables) and enables people to eat crops that are in season and are best suited to ones area. Fresh produce is often hard to come by in some urban neighborhoods, where grocery stores are either limited in space or even non-existent, and convenience stores are the most accessible places to buy food.

Here I must distinguish between types of urban neighborhoods. There are urban neighborhoods like mine, a mile east of downtown Seattle, which has a Natural Foods Co-op, Trader Joes, a weekly farmers' market, and conventional grocery stores offering plenty of local, organic produce, all within walking distance. Even with this abundance of available healthy food, the idea of urban farming is and has been popular in these types of neighborhoods, where there is bound to be a P-Patch every few miles and condo balconies overflow with container gardens. This surge is urban farming is brought on more by the desire to be healthier and more environmentally friendly than the actual lack of access to healthy food. Other urban neighborhoods, such as those in LA and Detroit (which, according to Richard Florida, author of The Great Reset, does not currently have any national grocery chains operating within the city limits) simply lack the access to fresh foods, and urban farming is one of the avenues that are being explored to correct this imbalance.

The concept is coming to my neighborhood. My neighbor, an urban planner and all-things-urban enthusiast, contacted a local business whose green space was not being utilized. They agreed to loan the land for a neighborhood garden. The first work weekend to clear space was this Saturday. I am excited to see how the project progresses. (Disclaimer: I pity any plant that has tried to grow in my containers. I am hoping I have more luck in raised beds).

13th and Marion Community Garden Project

Why do you need a garden, one may ask, in a neighborhood with an already disproportionate access to fresh food? Besides the obvious reasons (getting your hands dirty and gardening is fun, we don't have a yard, and, in Guy Clark's immortal words, there's nothing like a home grown tomato) I believe there can be farther reaching benefits, like general awareness, an exchange of ideas, failures, and successes to provide a model for other urban farms, beautifying urban space, community cohesion, and promoting more dense living by showing how to live without a yard of ones own.

More information about our neighborhood project:

Alleycat Acres || Urban Farming Collective Promotes 13th and Marion Project

Capitol Hill Seattle Blog Promotes 13th and Marion Project 

Email Wes Kirkman at 13th.marion.garden@gmail.com to claim a spot or for more information.