Lessons from the (Presumed) Enemy

It turns out we in the United States, along with the rest of the industrialized world, have some things to learn from those we are supposed to despise. The recent histories of two communist countries - North Korea and Cuba – illustrate divergent responses to unavoidable crisis, with dramatically different results. Even as our own inaction leads us toward the more disastrous outcome, the path with the light at the end may still be open to us.
For reasons stemming from the 1991 collapse of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, both North Korea and Cuba unexpectedly found themselves without their main source of economic aid. Without developed oilfields of their own, these communist states abruptly lost the energy source to fuel their industrialized agricultural systems. Modeled after the so-called “Green Revolution” (still in progress around the rest of the world), these systems relied upon artificially-produced crop varieties which require massive inputs of petroleum-based fertilizers and pesticides.
Despite a dramatic scarcity of these synthetic components, plus the fuel and lubrication to run the requisite agricultural machinery, economic planners in North Korea did nothing. The result of their inaction, compounded by a series of natural disasters, resulted in widespread famine that resulted in the starvation of an estimated two million citizens. North Korea has yet to recover; according to Amnesty International, a recent national nutrition survey found that 7 percent of children were severely malnourished, 37 percent were chronically malnourished, and 23.4 percent were underweight - a 70 percent rate of malnourishment.
Cuba’s response was different. Instead of freezing at the controls, President Fidel Castro appeared on Cuban national television to alert all Cubans about imminent energy shortages a week before his government received formal notice from Russia of its intention to curtail oil shipments, resulting in a 50 percent decrease in the available supply. With the Cuban agricultural economy concentrated on growing sugar cane for export in return for oil, plus the ongoing economic embargo imposed by the United States, a full blown depression was on its way.
In what is known in Cuban history as “the special period,” the national government took radical steps to transition the economy away from its reliance on fossil fuels. Reliance on automobiles was replaced with mass transit engineered through the conversion of semi trailer trucks into busses - the Cuban “camels.” Large tracts formerly committed to sugar cane were broken up, put under the control of smaller local councils, and dedicated to fruits and vegetables, using organic methods that relied on skilled farmers working with animal power in the place of farm workers trained to operate machines. Family plots, urban gardens, even rooftops were dedicated to growing food, as was land formerly sacrificed to the oil-intensive factory farming of meat and dairy products.
Along with lifestyles, the entire diet of Cuba changed, and there was pain. Before the transition was complete, the daily ration in some places was one banana and two slices of bread. Although the average Cuban lost some 20 pounds, famine was averted, while the food economy had become arguably the most ecologically and socially sensitive in the world. In 1999 Cuba was awarded the Swedish Parliament’s Right Livelihood Award, known as the “Alternative Nobel Prize,” for these advances. Today, while enjoying a greater level of food security, Cuba’s health statistics are roughly equivalent to those of the United States.
The lessons of Cuba’s escape from oil dependence are numerous. While it is arguable that dictatorship enabled a command-and-control response from the national government, Castro’s early and frank public assessment of the situation enabled each person to understand and become part of the process of survival. A pre-existing national commitment to public education provided a workforce capable of adapting to unforeseen events that would unfold along the way. When centralized administration of the transition proved cumbersome, some decision-making powers were conceded to nimbler community councils.
Cuban research in natural agriculture and medicine had a twenty-year head start, dating back to lessons learned from the worldwide oil supply shocks of the 1970s. Alarms raised by scientists that oil-intensive agriculture was damaging the island’s soil had also contributed to the search for a better way.
Finite resources like fossil fuels will come to an end of usefulness for human society. The relevant question is whether we will have food and energy systems ready to replace oil’s central role in our survival. Our lifestyles will change, yet the extent of suffering tomorrow will be dictated by the decisions we make today. How will we decide whether our future will look more like that of North Korea or Cuba?

Dave Wheelock, a member of the Oneida Nation of Wisconsin, is a collegiate sports administrator and coach who lives and home-studies in Socorro, New Mexico.