Notes1 Despite the acceptable results obtained so far in handing over idle lands in usufruct under Decree- Law No. 259 of 2008, thousands and thousands of hectares of arable land still await hands ready to produce what the population and the national economy so much need and what can be harvested from our fields to […]
If It Were Just the Marabú… Cuba’s Agriculture 2009–10
Notes1 “We face the imperative of making our land produce more. … the needed structural and conceptual changes will have to be introduced,” Raúl Castro famously proclaimed on 26 July 2007, a few days short of a year after provisionally taking over the reins of Cuba’s government from his incapacitated older brother. Nine months later, […]
Cuban Agriculture: The Return of the Campesinado
Notes1 Put simply, the model of state-run agriculture implanted in Cuba after the Revolution worked—albeit far from optimally—so long as the state had the means to furnish the imported equipment, spare parts, fuel, lubricants, fertilizer and plant chemicals on which producers had become increasingly dependent. When the Cuban economy lost its Soviet-bloc supports, the island’s […]
Cuba’s Economic Culture and the Reform Process
A brief flurry of excitement gripped Cuba and Cuba watchers abroad when the video of a meeting in January 2008, at which students at the University of Computer Science in Havana questioned Ricardo Alarcón, president of the Cuban National Assembly, on government policy in several areas became public knowledge through the BBC (Ravsberg, 2008) and […]
Cuba’s Dysfunctional Agriculture: The Challenge Facing the Government
Against a background of high current and foreseeable food import prices, agriculture shows an unsatisfactory performance, with lower production of provision crops, vegetables, beans, citrus fruits, corn and other products. This sector is marked by subjective management deficiencies [and] a decline in labor productivity and also in the average hours worked. While not forgetting the […]