Organic Agriculture in Cuba: Managing with Limited Resources

Summary

The typical Cuban farming units are large-scale cooperatives, in which farming families are more or less loosely organized. In the low lands, these cooperatives normally specialize in a few products for the market and a higher diversity of self-sufficiency crops. In the mountain areas, these cooperatives produce in diverse agroforestry systems. This is especially the case for the eastern provinces Guantanamo and Santiago. Large-scale plantations were developed by the Spanish and US colonialists, and further developed by the socialist government. After Cuban Revolution in 1959, land was distributed to more than 200’000 small farmer families through the Agrarian Reforms of 1959 and 1963, while 70 percent of the latifundio lands passed over to state control. Since the collapse of the former socialist economic community in the early 1990s, Cuba’s agriculture faces multiple challenges; there is a shortage of agricultural inputs and Cuba’s farmers must learn to be self-sufficient and to manage with their own resources. This results in difficulties to meet Cuba’s production goals. Domestic food markets are periodically under supplied, and export volumes are decreasing. Cuba has the challenging task to increase the output and efficiency of the complete food chain, based as much as possible on locally available resources.