agricultureSUSTAINABLE
IN CUBA
or a country that prides
itself on its scientific accomplishments, Cuba may, by
necessity and desperation, have
stumbled upon a modern-day economic niche that will serve it well
in the future. That niche? Organic farming, the favorite of socially and health-conscious yuppies
throughout the developed world.
During what the government
called, euphemistically, the perío-do especial following the 1991
collapse of the Soviet Union
and the loss of Russian subsidies, Cuba’s GDP was halved and
imports dropped by 75 percent.
The availability of fertilizers and
pesticides dropped by about 70
percent, and petroleum energy
imports, which supported heavy
machinery in farming, were cut
in half. The resulting paralysis in
food production sparked shortages. Caloric intake for the average
Cuban dropped 30 percent island-wide during the early 1990s, well
below the United Nations Food
F
98 Americas Quarterly FALL 2009
and Agriculture Organization
(FAO)-recommended minimums.
In response to the crisis, the
government dispatched its scientists to the fields with a new agricultural gospel.
Soviet-style monoculture,
which had turned vast tracts of
land over to sugarcane production,
were no longer in fashion. Instead,
the scientists pushed sustainable agricultural methods such as
crop rotation, intercropping, the
use of biopesticides, and cover
cropping. Animal power replaced
heavy-farm machinery. Grazing
animals, composting and earthworms replaced chemical-based
fertilizers. By making a virtue
of necessity, Cuban agriculture
emerged as the kind of sustainable model of farming that many
other nations have yet to adapt.
By the mid-1990s, conditions
had stabilized. Daily caloric
intake had increased. So the government touted its organic-based
triumphs as part and parcel of
by Lance Steagall
the revolutionary experiment.
Many academics and ecologists elsewhere were impressed.
Pamela Stricker, associate professor of political science at California State University and author
of Toward a Culture of Nature:
Environmental Policy and Sustainable Development in Cuba
(2007), wrote that Cuba’s socialist characteristics are “most likely
a necessary condition for a true
transition to a sustainable society.” Richard Levins, a professor
at Harvard University’s School of
Public Health, argued in a paper
titled “How Cuba is Going Ecological“ (2005) that socialist social
arrangements had “an almost natural correlate” of sustainable economic and social development.
But for all the praise, Cuba’s
agricultural success may be less
a demonstration of enlightened
socialist management than
an effort to undo the damage
caused by an earlier revolutionary model based on industrial
