What’s going on with land-use in Cuba?: Disparate data sets and the Cuban agricultural transition

Abstract

This article focuses on agricultural land-use changes in Cuba following the fall of the Soviet Union. In response to the end of Soviet subsidies, which previously underwrote Cuba’s industrial agricultural system, the government rapidly transitioned from large, centralized agricultural operations to small-scale farming and cooperatives to address local food security. This paper uses a variety of empirical data sources, including remote sensing data available from the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), to unpack some of the land-use implications of this radical agrarian transition. Combined, these data shed new light on the magnitude and nature of agrarian land-use changes that have occurred over the past several decades in Cuba. The paper concludes by placing these empirics in the context of shifting geopolitics and the increasing impacts of climate change, issues of great concern to Cuba and other island nations in the Caribbean.