PRESS RELEASE
Contact: Margie Bushman
Santa Barbara Permaculture Network.
(805) 962-2571, margie@sbpermaculture.org,
Santa Barbara Permaculture
Network
Permaculture Around the World Series
with Robyn Francis from
Australia speaking on
Permaculture in CUBA
Saturday, August 8, 6:30 - 8:30pm
2009, Donation $5
Santa Barbara Central Library, Faulkner Gallery
Santa Barbara
Permaculture Network continues its Permaculture Around the World
series, this time welcoming Robyn Francis from Australia as she
speaks about her past and future visits to Cuba where she and
other Australian permaculturists have been credited with helping Cuba
transform the islands agriculture to a more sustainable model through
perrmaculture.
Climate
Change and Peak Oil are topics on the minds of many Americans
today. There is much to learn from Cuba's response to the sudden
loss of cheap and abundant oil in the early 1990's with the fall of the
Soviet Union and the continued U.S. Embargo in place since the
1960's. Cuba's industrial model of agriculture under the Soviets
was highly mechanized with monoculture crops reliant on petro-based
pesticides and fertilizers. The era in Cuba following the Soviet
collapse is known to Cubans as the "Special Period" when it
lost more than 50 percent of it oil imports, much of its food, and 85
percent of its trade economy. Transportation halted, people
went hungry, and the average Cuban lost 30 pounds.
Dictated
by reality, Cubans began to bring agriculture into the city with urban
gardens, cultivating vegetables wherever they could. A small group of
Australians assisted in this grass-roots effort, coming to Cuba in 1993
to teach Permaculture, a system based on sustainable agriculture that
uses far less energy. With a grant from the Cuban government they
set up the first Permaculture demonstration site, that evolved into the
Foundation for Nature and Humanity's Urban Permaculture demonstration
site located in Havana. Today 50 percent of Havana's vegetables
come from inside the city, while in other Cuban towns and cities, urban
gardens produce from 80 percent to more than 100 percent of what they
need.
More
recently Australians have come back to Cuba to assist after two
devastating hurricanes wrought massive destruction throughout Cuba in
September 2008. The loss of crops, soil and organic matter from the
torrential rains and flooding, challenged all the islands agriculture,
including the permaculture sites.
Robyn Francis and the Cuba-Australia Permaculture Exchange (CAPE) toured
the island to assess the damage, offer help, and take the opportunity to
learn from the disaster to design more resilient systems for the
future.
Robyn
Francis has just returned from a visit to Cuba in June 2009 as
part of Cuban-Australia Permaculture Exchange (CAPE) and will be
reporting on her observation in her talk on One-Earth Footprint -
Learning from Cuba's Experience. Discover the key factors
enabling Cuba to survive collapse, live within its ecological footprint,
and how this relates to Permaculture and Transition design. Don't miss
the chance to learn from one of permaculture's earliest pioneers.
Robyn
Francis is an award-winning international permaculture designer,
educator, presenter and innovator, with over 25 years of permaculture
work throughout Australia New Zealand, USA, India, Indonesia, Germany,
Cuba, and Taiwan, and including projects ranging from outback communities
to urban development. . Robyn was founding director of Permaculture
International Ltd (PIL) in 1987, editor of the Permaculture International
Journal, designer and creator of Djanbung Gardens
(www.
permaculture.com.au), one of Australia's leading permaculture
centers.
The event
takes place on Saturday, Aug 8 , 6:30 pm at the downtown Santa
Barbara Public Library, 40 East Anapamu St, Santa Barbara. Donation
$5, no reservations needed. The event is presented by Santa Barbara
Permaculture Network Non-Profit. and Quailsprings Learning Oasis and
Permaculture Farm. For more information, (805) 962-2571,
margie@sbpermaculture.org,
www.sbpermaculture.org
-end-
Santa Barbara Permaculture
Network
an educational
non-profit since 2000
(805) 962-2571
P.O. Box 92156, Santa Barbara, CA 93190
margie@sbpermaculture.org
www.sbpermaculture.org
"We are like trees,
we must create new leaves, in new directions, in order to grow." -
Anonymous
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Santa Barbara Permaculture Network
an educational
non-profit since 2000
(805) 962-2571
P.O. Box 92156, Santa Barbara, CA 93190
margie@sbpermaculture.org
www.sbpermaculture.org
"We are like trees,
we must create new leaves, in new directions, in order to grow." -
Anonymous