Russia — and Cuba — demonstrate food sovereignty

MV5BMTIyMjc3Mzc5M15BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwMDY4MDQzMQ@@._V1._CR0,0,450,450_SS80_I woke up to peak oil, and how it demonstrates the need for transforming our society from the bottom up, starting with growing our own food, in 2004, when I attended an intentional community conference and happened to catch the just released and now justly-famous movie on Cuba, The Power of Community. This one-hour long film documents the “Special Period” in Cuba that began when the Soviet Union broke up in 1991 and stopped shipping oil. The average Cuban lost 20 pounds that first winter. They almost starved to death.

Within a few years, Cuba had inaugurated a food revolution, transforming from oil-fueled big ag to organic, and growing much of Havana’s food inside the city. Here’s a 2008 video. I can only imagine how much farther along they are today in establishing genuine (non GMO) food security, i.e. food sovereignty.

In Russia, when that empire collapsed, people already knew how to grow their own food.

The Russians Prove Small Scale Organic CAN Feed the World

June 25, 2013

Christina Sarich, Staff Writer

Waking Times

Flickr-veggies-ilovebutter

If you’ve already been through an economic collapse, you might know a thing or two about how to feed your family with little money. More importantly, you might know how to do it without pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, and GMO seed. On a total of about 20 million acres managed by over 35 million Russian families, Russians are carrying on an old-world technique, which we Americans might learn from. They are growing their own organic crops — and it’s working.

According to some statistics, they grow 92% of the entire countries’ potatoes, 77% of its vegetables, 87% of its fruit, and feed 71% of the entire population from privately owned, organic farms or house gardens all across the country. These aren’t huge Agro-farms run by pharmaceutical companies; these are small family farms and less-than-an-acre gardens.

A recent report from Agro-ecology and the Right to Food says that organic and sustainable small-scale farming could double food production in the parts of the world where hunger is the biggest issue. Within five to 10 years we could see a big jump in crop cultivation. It could also take the teeth out of GMO business in the US.

According to World Watch, we can also farm fish responsibly and feed the planet. Sustainable fish farms along with organic gardening are becoming the new agro-business.

“Farmed seafood has certain advantages over wild fish in meeting modern demand. For a global marketplace that demands increasingly predictable products—uniform-sized fillets available year-round, free of the vagaries of weather or open-ocean fishing—fish farming delivers this predictability. Farms are also becoming more productive, raising fish at a lower cost and expanding the potential market.” (Brian Halwell, Farming Fish for the Future).

As long as this is done in sustainable ways without GMO salmon, we really can feed over 7 billion people.

Unfortunately, not all of us want to utilize organic farming. Purchasing 500,000 shares of Monsanto stock in 2012, Bill Gates is just one key figure who argues that GMOs are an absolute necessity in order to fight global starvation. Of course along with ‘saving the world from starvation’, GMO crops also bring along a large number of unwanted health and environmental effects. This isn’t even considering the fact that long term, we truly don’t know what kind of impact this will have on the earth on a major scale. Though we do know once everything is GMO, it will be virtually impossible to go back to a natural world.

Check out NaturalSociety’s YouTube Channel for some recent videos on the March Against Monsanto event occurring in Philadelphia, PA. The videos offer some educational information along with a look at how people everywhere reject Monsanto and genetically modified organisms. Say goodbye to GMOs. We don’t need them.

“We won’t solve hunger and stop climate change with industrial farming on large plantations,” says Olivier De Schutter.

This article was originally featured on NaturalSociety.com.

About the Author

Christina Sarich is a musician, yogi, humanitarian and freelance writer who channels many hours of studying Lao Tzu, Paramahansa Yogananda, Rob Brezny, Miles Davis, and Tom Robbins into interesting tidbits to help you Wake up Your Sleepy Little Head, and See the Big Picture. Her blog is Yoga for the New World. Her latest book is Pharma Sutra: Healing the Body And Mind Through the Art of Yoga.

– See more at: http://www.wakingtimes.com/2013/06/25/the-russians-prove-small-scale-organic-can-feed-the-world/#sthash.AdWEEocm.dpuf

About Ann Kreilkamp

PhD Philosophy, 1972. Rogue philosopher ever since.
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