The peaking of liberal democracy: energy scarcity, food security, and insurgent governance
programmes. They also foster ‘food democracy’, a deliberative form of
local food-system governance.
The least promising proposals are those calling for strong government
intervention and those planning to maximise national self-reliance, promote local food production, encourage re-ruralisation (Heinberg 2007),
refocus the education sector on the food and farming transition (Heinberg
and Bomberg 2009), and coordinate a ‘war-time mobilisation’ (Brown
2008). The call for centralised planning flies in the face of entrenched neoliberal orthodoxy favouring a minimal state, and ignores the degree to
which policy-making has been captured by corporate interests. A ‘wartime mobilisation’ led by the current UK power elite would probably unleash accelerated oil and gas fracking, GM crop production, and offshore
land-grabbing. Therefore, proposals for national government transition
planning may be unrealistic at this present time.
Lessons from the Cuban Special Period
Cuban experience suggests that opportunities for change may open up
when the energy crisis deepens, and that assertive community-led initiatives can set precedents for policy innovation. The Special Period,
precipitated by the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989 and a tightened
US trade embargo, entailed dramatic falls in imports of oil, food, and
agricultural inputs. It provides important insights into the likely impacts
of future energy scarcity on food and farming systems, resilience factors,
and possible coping responses.
Due to ongoing US hostility, Cuba had maintained strategic reserves of
fuel, food, fertilisers, and seed. This meant that the full impact of the
crisis was not felt until 1993-94 (Wright 2009), providing a ‘breathing
space’ to develop adaptive responses. The loss of oil and agricultural
inputs led to the collapse of large-scale, high-input industrial farming.
However, low-input, small-scale family and cooperative farming, using
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