Agroecology in Cuba: A History of Adaptation and Resistance

First name: 
Lola
Last name: 
Picayo
Class Year: 
2023
Advisor: 
Michael Dove
Essay Abstract: 
In 2019, Cuba ranked #1 according to the Sustainable Development Index (SDGI), , largely due to the country’s well-established network of low input, organic farms. The small-scale farming method, known conventionally as organopónicos, or, agroecology, is commonly practiced by urban and rural Cubans alike. Agroecology is a holistic practice of organic farming that works in concert with the natural world to cultivate crops, contrasting with conventional, industrial monocultures. The purpose of this essay is to demonstrate the multidecadal process by which agroecological farming has become ubiquitous in Cuba. I propose an alternative historiography of the investment in, and institutionalization of, agroecology that dates its development to the Cuban Revolution, contrary to a large portion of existing scholarship that dates Cuba agroecology to the 1990s. I use scholarship, historical archives, and my own research in Cuba to make this argument.