Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations - Kootenay Local Agricultural Society

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gardens grew up throughout the island, hundreds in Havana alone. Land
slated for development was converted to acres of vegetable gardens that
supplied markets where local people bought tomatoes, lettuce, potatoes
and other crops. By 2004 Havana’s formerly vacant lots produced nearly
the city’s entire vegetable supply.
Cuba’s conversion from conventional agriculture to large-scale semiorganic
farming demonstrates that such a transformation is possible—in a
dictatorship isolated from global market forces. But the results are not
entirely enviable; after almost two decades of this inadvertent experiment,
meat and milk remain in short supply.
Cuba’s labor-intensive agriculture may not produce basic crops as cheaply
as American industrial farming, but the average Cuban diet did recover that
lost third meal. Still, it is ironic that in retreating from the socialist agenda,
this isolated island became the first modern society to adopt widespread
organic and biologically intensive farming. Cuba’s necessity-driven move
toward agricultural self-sufficiency provides a preview of what may come
on a larger scale once we burn through the supply of cheap oil that presently
drives modern agriculture. And it is somewhat comforting to know that on
at least one island the experiment has already been run without social collapse.
Less comforting is the question of whether something similar could
be pulled off in a society other than a one-party police state.
After Darwin’s famous sojourn in the Galapagos, the isolated nature of
islands strongly influenced biological theory. But it is only in the last several
decades that such thinking reached the realm of anthropology. While
people may someday migrate into space to colonize other planets, the vast
majority of us remain trapped on our planet for the foreseeable future.
Although a global rerun of Haiti, Mangaia, or Easter Island is by no means
inevitable, the experiences of societies on islands around the world remind
us that Earth is the ultimate island, an oasis in space rendered hospitable
by a thin skin of soil that, once lost, rebuilds only over geologic time.
islands in time