[Marxism] Dale Wen: Peak oil preview: North Korea & Cuba

["Fei Jiao" <feijiao@xxxxxxxxx>]

Peak oil preview: North Korea & Cuba
Dale Jiajun Wen
(YES! Magazine Summer 2006 Issue,
http://www.yesmagazine.org/article.asp?ID=1462 )

A tale of two countries: How North Korea and Cuba reacted differently
to a suddenly diminished oil supply.

Dale Wen is a visiting scholar with the International Forum on
Globalization. A native of China, she specializes in China and
globalization issues.
*****     *****     *****
That peak oil is coming is no longer a question. It's only a matter of
when. The global food system we are familiar with depends crucially on
cheap energy and long-distance transportation—food consumed in the
United States travels an average of 1,400 miles. Does peak oil mean
inevitable starvation? Two countries provide a preview. Their
divergent stories, one of famine, one of sufficiency, stand as a
warning and a model. North Korea and Cuba experienced the peak-oil
scenario prematurely and abruptly due to the collapse of the former
Soviet bloc and the intensified trade embargo against Cuba. The quite
different outcomes are partly due to luck: the Cuban climate allows
people to survive on food rations that would be fatal in North Korea's
harsh winters. But the more fundamental reason is policy. North Korea
tried to carry on business as usual as long as possible, while Cuba
implemented a proactive policy to move toward sustainable agriculture
and self-sufficiency.

The 1990s famine in North Korea is one of the least-understood
disasters in recent years. It is generally attributed to the failure
of Kim Il Jung's regime. The argument is simple: if the government
controls everything, it must be responsible for crop failure. But this
ideological blame game hides a more fundamental problem: the failure
of industrial chemical farming. With the coming of peak oil, many
other countries may experience similar disasters.
North Korea developed its agriculture on the Green Revolution model,
with its dependence on technology, imported machines, petroleum,
chemical fertilizers, and pesticides. There were signs of soil
compaction and degradation, but the industrial farming model provided
enough food for the population. Then came the sudden collapse of the
Soviet bloc in 1989. Supplies of oil, farming equipment, fertilizers,
and pesticides dropped significantly, and this greatly contributed to
the famine that followed. As a November 1998 report from the joint UN
Food and Agriculture Organization and World Food Program observed:
The highly mechanized DPR [North] Korean agriculture faces a serious
constraint as about four-fifths of motorized farm machinery and
equipment is out of use due to obsolescence and lack of spare parts
and fuel. … In fact, because of non-availability of trucks, harvested
paddy has been seen left on the fields in piles for long periods.
North Korea failed to change in response to the crisis. Devotion to
the status quo precipitated the food shortages that continue to this
day. Cuba faced similar problems. In some respects, the challenge was
even bigger in Cuba. Before 1989, North Korea was self-sufficient in
grain production, while Cuba imported an estimated 57 percent of its
food1, because its agriculture, especially the state farm sector, was
geared towards production of sugar for export.
After the Soviet collapse and the tightening of the U.S. embargo, Cuba
lost 85 percent of its trade, and its fossil fuel-based agricultural
inputs were reduced by more than 50 percent. At the height of the
resulting food crisis, the daily ration was one banana and two slices
of bread per person in some places. Cuba responded with a national
effort to restructure agriculture.
Cuban agriculture now consists of a diverse combination of organic
farming, perma-culture, urban gardens, animal power, and biological
fertilizing and pest control. On a national level, Cuba now has
probably the most ecological and socially sensitive agriculture in the
world. In 1999, the Swedish Parliament awardedthe Right Livelihood
Award, known as the "Alternative Nobel Prize," to Cuba for these
advances.
Even before the 1990 crisis, primarily in response to the negative
effects of intensive chemical use as well as the 1970s energy crisis,
Cuban scientists began to develop bio-pesticides and bio-fertilizers
to substitute for chemical inputs. They designed a two-phase program
based on early experiments with biological agents. The first stage
developed small-scale, localized production technologies; the second
stage was aimed at developing semi-industrial and industrial
technologies. This groundwork allowed Cuba to roll out substitutes for
agricultural chemicals rapidly in the wake of the 1990 crisis. Since
1991, 280 centers have been established to produce biological agents
using techniques and supplies specific to each locality.2
Though some alternative technologies were initially developed solely
to replace chemical inputs, they are now part of a more holistic
agroecology. Scientists and farmers recognized the imbalances in
high-input monoculture, and are transforming the whole system. In
contrast to the one-size-fits-all solution of the Green Revolution,
agro-ecology tailors farming to local conditions. It designs complex
agro-ecosystems that use mutually beneficial crops and locally adapted
seeds, take advantage of topography and soil conditions, and maintain
rather than deplete the soil.3
Agro-ecology takes a systemic approach, blurring traditional
distinctions between disciplines and using knowledge from
environmental science, economics, agronomy, ethics, sociology, and
anthropology. It emphasizes learning by doing, with training programs
allocating 50 percent of their time to hands-on work.The wide use of
participatory methods greatly helps to disseminate, generate, and
extend agro-ecological knowledge. In short, the agricultural research
and education process has become more organic as well.4
Important institutional changes have eased the transition. Big state
farms have been reorganized into much smaller farmer collectives to
take advantage of the new labor-intensive, localized methods. The
change from farm-laborer to skilled farmer is not an overnight
process—many newly established collectives lag behind established
co-ops in terms of sustainable management, but programs are in place
to help them catch up.
Cuba's research and education system played a pivotal role in the
greening of the country. The focus on human development has
practically eradicated illiteracy. Cuban workers have the highest
percentage of post-secondary education in Latin America. This highly
educated population prepared Cuba well for the transition to the more
knowledge-intensive model of sustainable agriculture.
In the 1970s and 1980s, most agricultural education was based on Green
Revolution technology. The 1990 crisis rendered many
agro-professionals powerless without chemical inputs, machinery, and
petroleum. In response, agricultural universities initiated courses in
agro-ecological training. A national center was created to support new
research and the educational needs of the agricultural community. Now,
courses, meetings, workshops, field days, talks, and experiential
exchanges are organized for farmers. As some traditional methods of
organic farming have survived among small farmers or in co-ops,
farmer-to-farmer communication is widely utilized to facilitate mutual
learning.
The coming of peak oil will shake the very foundation of the global
food system. The hardship Cuba and North Korea experienced in the
1990s may very well be the future we all face, both already ailing
rural sectors in many Third-World countries, and highly subsidized
agriculture in the North. Cuban agriculture shows that there is an
alternative—increasing output and growing better food while reducing
chemical inputs is possible with proper restructuring of agriculture
and food systems.
It is unlikely that we will have an abrupt peak-oil scenario where
half the fossil-fuel agricultural inputs disappear overnight; more
likely we will have gradually yet steadily rising oil prices, making
conventional chemical inputs increasingly unaffordable.
This is the advantage we have over Cuba and North Korea — while
virtually nobody predicted the sudden collapse of the Soviet bloc, we
know peak oil is coming and have time to prepare. We have
disadvantages as well: peak oil will be a global crisis, probably made
worse by global warming, so there will not likely be any international
aid to bail people out in the face of a major food crisis—either we
deal with the problem now, or nature will deal with us.
Not only politicians, but also ordinary people need to consider the
question: should we try to shore up the system and carry on business
as usual for as long as possible, or should we take preemptive
measures to avoid disaster? This choice may determine whether we end
up with a more sustainable agriculture like Cuba, or with disastrous
famine like North Korea.
------------------
FOOTNOTES:
1. Peter Rosset, "Alternative Agriculture Works: The Case of Cuba,"
Monthly Review 50:3, July/August 1998.
2. Nilda Pérez & Luis L. Vázquez, "Ecological Pest Management,"
3. in Sustainable Agriculture and Resistance: Transforming Food
Production in Cuba, Fernando Funes, et al., eds. Food First Books:
Oakland, 2002.
4.Miguel A. Altieri, "The Principles and Strategies of Agroecology in
Cuba," in ibid.
5.Luis Garcia, "Agroecological Education and Training," in ibid.

________________________________________________
YOU MUST clip all extraneous text before replying to a message.
Send list submissions to: Marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism