Cuba's agricultural system was turned on its head by the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. It was one of the most dramatic agricultural collapses of recent history--suddenly Cuba's heavily-subsidized exports to Russia and East Germany disappeared, the large state farming operations had no fuel or spare parts to keep their thousands of tractors running, and the heavy chemical inputs Cuba had become accustomed to were no longer available. Almost overnight, Cuba's agriculture radically transformed.
Most large state farms were broken up into smaller privatized cooperatives to increase yields. By necessity these private cooperatives were semi-organic, using very little or no pesticides and fertilizers (see figure 1). Instead of tractors, resourceful Cuban farmers turned to oxen, the "peasant" means of plowing which had been largely abandoned in the 1960s. As a side benefit, plowing by oxen teams created less soil compaction and leaching of nutrients, creating healthier soil without fertilizer. And because technological solutions weren't an option any longer, Cuban agricultural scientists devoted their research to low-tech, sustainable alternatives. Cuban farmers began using beneficial insects, soil bacteria, crop rotation, and intercropping--many of the same innovations that U.S. organic farmers were concurrently experimenting with for the first time--to manage pests and increase productivity.
Figure 1. Cuba's Fertilizer Use Intensity, 1961-2002
Source: EarthTrends, 2008
Cuba's switch, according to some, was the world's largest conversion from traditional agriculture to semi-organic farming. It wasn't a perfect solution, to be sure. Food production per capita dropped drastically in 1993 and has only recently begun to approach the food production of the 1960s to 1980s (see figure 2). Leading the way in the recent increase are the private cooperatives, which have been far more successful than state-owned farms. The government owns about 65 percent of tilled land in Cuba; private farmers and cooperatives own the other 35 percent. But on just 35 percent of the land, these farmers now produce 60 percent of Cuba's total agricultural output.
Figure 2. Cuba's Food Production Per Capita Index, 1961-2005
Source: EarthTrends, 2008
Need for More Food
Still, many people in Cuba aren't getting enough to eat, and the problem is twofold. For one thing, the government stores where residents can spend their ration cards often run out of staple foods. And the more recent additions of free market stalls, where farmers can sell their surplus after meeting the government quota, have prices too high for many average Cubans to afford. Essentially, to feed the country the successful cooperative system needs to be grown even more.
In just a few months of acting as Cuba's president, Raul Castro has espoused this vision as well. In many ways his proposals are just a continuation of the privatization that was begun in 1993. Specifically, there are three primary improvements in cooperative farming that Castro has begun to address:
- More local control.
Cooperatives have been hamstrung by lack of autonomy, as the government has controlled access to farming supplies and the conditions under which the produce can be sold. But this is beginning to change. Already farmers can buy more supplies and can sell produce directly, and governmental restructuring has put more decision-making power in the hands of "municipal agriculture delegations," decentralizing agricultural oversight. - More resources.
Castro announced in late March that private farmers will now be able to lease state-owned land for cultivation. The long mismanagement of state farms has caused half of the nation's arable land to be underutilized or fallow. In addition, to stimulate production the state has raised prices it pays growers and begun selling herbicides and fertilizers to private farmers, the sale of which was always seen as anathema to socialist orthodoxy. - More freedom.
Cuba's deputy agriculture minister announced in March that public cooperatives would be granted more credit and more decision-making power in what to produce and where to sell it. For instance, private and public sugar cooperatives were told that once they met a production quota, extra land could be used to grow whatever they wanted--a departure from prior policy, which was that 80 percent of surplus crops grown had to be sold to the government at very low prices.
Another Transformation on the Horizon
However, many Cubans still feel their agriculture is hurt by U.S. embargo, and political changes in the United States may make a lifting of the embargo in sight. That change would position Cuba to once again transform its agriculture, but in the opposite direction from 1993--toward large industrial farms like the ones common in the United States.
Those farms, and the influx of subsidized U.S. food, may be the answer to the food problem that has plagued Cuba for decades, finally making food affordable for all its citizens. But it would also be a premature ending of Cuba's grand experiment in sustainable farming, just as productivity has nearly reached its previous highs. And the experiment would end, potentially, on the eve of better U.S.-Cuba relations, when much of Cuban farmers' and scientists' accumulated knowledge in sustainable farming could finally have an open route to being shared with American growers.
So far, reforms are mostly promises and not realities, and the future of the embargo is highly speculative. But as they take shape, Cuba's agriculture--as in 1993--may soon become unrecognizable, almost overnight.
Top photo by miss mass via Flickr
RELATED LINKS:
"The Cuba Diet," Harper's, April 2005
EarthTrends
Cuba: Agriculture and Food Profile
