ABSTRACT
Significant changes have taken place in Cuban agricultural policy since 1989, the year of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the subsequent crumbling of the Soviet trading bloc. The most important development occurred in September 1993, when it was announced that Cuba’s huge state farm sector was to be dismantled and reorganized as worker-managed production cooperatives. Moreover, the dismantling of the state farm sector was subsequently followed, in October 1994, by the opening of free agricultural markets for above-plan production. We argue in this chapter that these reforms are as potentially a significant a development for Cuba as was the reform of the Chinese commune system for China in the late 1970s.
