ABSTRACT
With the Special Period, the state soon realized that Cuba had to become more food self-sufficient in order to substitute for the previously imported foods and inputs. This meant increasing efficiency of the agricultural sector in two ways: through the streamlining and improving of production techniques and technologies as well as of farm organization; and through providing incentives for increased production. Farmers across the country thus had to develop coping strategies to deal with both the challenges of the Special Period and these new state reforms in the agricultural sector. What emerged was a patchwork pattern of farming, with divergent forms of agriculture existing on-farm, and between farms, regions and provinces. This mixture of approaches was still in a state of flux towards the end of the 1990s.
