Abstract
Researchers and activists located around the world often look to Cuba—which experienced a massive transition to small-scale, low-input agriculture in the 1990s–2000s—as a case study in sustainable agriculture adaptation. Their analyses tend to highlight external political-economic conditions, and the state policies and programs that they prompted, as the factors driving the spread of diversified, low-input farming practices. Based on 16 months of ethnographic fieldwork, this chapter argues that localized work by grassroots and non-state organizations to increase autonomy and agency has been an equally important compliment to these structural factors in the ongoing process of Cuban agricultural transformation. Specifically, it analyzes the practices and philosophies of the permaculture network of the Cuban Fundación Antonio Núñez Jiménez de la Naturaleza y el Hombre (FANJ) in order to provide lessons for US-based and international scholars and activists on how to build “community capacity” and “skillful disclosure” for food sovereignty and justice.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
- 1.
The term “sustainable agriculture” is broad. In Cuba, various projects in environmental, social, and cultural sustainability have prioritized farming and food production philosophies ranging from organic agriculture, to agroecology, and permaculture. The general term “sustainable agriculture” is used here to encompass these connected movements.
- 2.
To protect the privacy of the people who participated in this research I have chosen not to reveal the name of the specific province or city where this fieldwork was conducted.
- 3.
Following ethnographic conventions and the terms of informed consent that were described to participants prior to interviews, all names here are pseudonyms, in order to protect the anonymity of informants.
References
Altieri, Miguel A., Nelso Companioni, Kristina Cañizares, Catherine Murphy, Peter Rosset, Martin Bourque, and Clara I. Nicholls. 1999. The greening of the ‘barrios’: Urban agriculture for food security in Cuba. Agriculture and Human Values 16 (2): 131–140. doi:10.1023/A:1007545304561.
Altieri, Miguel A., and Fernando Funes Monzote. 2012. The paradox of Cuban agriculture. Monthly Review 63(8). http://monthlyreview.org/2012/01/01/the-paradox-of-cuban-agriculture/.
Baxter, Kirtrina. 2015. A black woman practicing permaculture. Permaculture design: Regenerating life together.
Benjamin, Medea, Joseph Collins, and Michael Scott. 1989. No free lunch: Food and revolution in Cuba today. San Francisco: The Institute for Food and Development Policy.
Benjamin, Medea, and Peter Rosset. 1994. The greening of the revolution: Cuba’s experiment with organic agriculture. New York: Ocean Press.
Casimiro-González, José Antonio. 2007. Pensando Con La Familia En La Finca Agroecológica. Habana: Cubasolar.
Cruz, Maria Caridad, Roberto Sánchez Medina, and Carmen Cabrera. 2006. Permacultura criolla. La Habana, Cuba: FANJ.
Del Real, Patricio, and Anna Cristina Pertierra. 2008. Inventar: Recent struggles and inventions in housing in two Cuban cities. Buildings & Landscapes: Journal of the Vernacular Architecture Forum 15: 78–92.
FAO. 2015. The state of food and agriculture, social protection and agriculture: Breaking the cycle of rural poverty. Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.
Ferguson, Rafter Sass, and Sarah Taylor Lovell. 2013. Permaculture for agroecology: Design, movement, practice, and worldview. A review. Agronomy for Sustainable Development 34 (2): 251–274. doi:10.1007/s13593-013-0181-6.
Freire, Paulo. 2000. Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 30th Anniversary Edition. 30th Anniversary edition. New York: Bloomsbury Academic.
Friedmann, Harriet, and Philip McMichael. 1989. Agriculture and the state system: The rise and decline of national agricultures, 1870 to the present. Sociologia Ruralis 29 (2): 93–117.
Funes, Fernando. 2002. The organic farming movement in Cuba. In Sustainable agriculture and resistance: Transforming food production in Cuba, 1–26. Oakland, Calif.: Food First Books.
Funes, Fernando, et al. (eds.). 2002. Sustainable agriculture and resistance: Transforming local food production in Cuba. Oakland: Food First Books.
Gold, Marina. 2015. People and state in socialist Cuba: ideas and practices of revolution. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. http://www.palgrave.com/us/book/9781137539816.
Holt-Giménez, Eric. 2015. Food justice and food sovereignty in the USA. Nyeleni Newsletter, September.
Holt-Giménez, Eric, and Yi Wang. 2011. Reform or transformation? The pivotal role of food justice in the U.S. food movement. Race/Ethnicity: Multidisciplinary Global Contexts 5 (1): 83–102.
Kerssen, Tanya M. 2015. Food sovereignty and the Quinoa boom: Challenges to sustainable re-peasantisation in the southern Altiplano of Bolivia. Third World Quarterly 36 (3): 489–507. doi:10.1080/01436597.2015.1002992.
La Via Campesina. 2011. Organisation: The international peasant’s voice. February 9. http://viacampesina.org/en/index.php/organisation-mainmenu-44.
Malik, Khalid. 2014. 2014 human development report. New York: The United Nations Development Programme. http://www.undp.org/content/undp/en/home/librarypage/hdr/2014-human-development-report.html.
McKay, Ben, Ryan Nehring, and Marygold Walsh-Dilley. 2014. The ‘state’ of food sovereignty in Latin America: Political projects and alternative pathways in Venezuela, Ecuador and Bolivia. The Journal of Peasant Studies 41 (6): 1175–1200. doi:10.1080/03066150.2014.964217.
McMichael, Philip. 2009. A food regime genealogy. The Journal of Peasant Studies 36 (1): 139–169. doi:10.1080/03066150902820354.
Mollison, Bill. 1991. Introduction to permaculture. Tasmania, Australia: Tagari.
Morgan, Faith. 2006. The power of community: How Cuba survived peak oil. The Community Solution.
Nelson, Erin, Steffanie Scott, Judie Cukier, and Ángel Leyva Galán. 2009. Institutionalizing agroecology: Successes and challenges in Cuba. Agriculture and Human Values 26 (3): 233–243. doi:http://dx.doi.org.libproxy.lib.unc.edu/10.1007/s10460-008-9156-7.
Núñez Jiménez, Antonio. 1960. Reforma Agraria En La Revolución Cubana. Habana: Departamento de Relaciones Públicos.
Oxfam America. 2001. Cuba: Going against the green. Boston and Washington, D.C.
Premat, Adriana. 2009. State power, private plots and the greening of Havana’s urban agriculture movement. City and Society 21 (1): 28–57.
Redmund, LaDonna. 2013. Food+justice=democracy. Manhattan: Tedx.
Rosset, Peter, Braulio Machín Sosa, Adilén María Roque Jaime, Ávila Lozano, and Dana Rocío. 2011. The Campesino-to-Campesino agroecology movement of ANAP in Cuba: Social process methodology in the construction of sustainable peasant agriculture and food sovereignty. The Journal of Peasant Studies 38 (1): 161–191.
Rural Economic Policy Program. n.d. Measuring community capacity building: A workbook-in-progress for rural communities. The Aspen Institute. https://www.aspeninstitute.org/sites/default/files/content/docs/csg/Measuring_Community_Capactiy_Building.pdf.
Reardon, Simón, Juan Alberto, and Reinaldo Alemán Pérez. 2010. Agroecology and the development of indicators of food sovereignty in Cuban food systems. Journal of Sustainable Agriculture 34 (8): 907–922.
Spinosa, Charles, Fernando Flores, and Hubert L. Dreyfus. 1999. Disclosing new worlds: Entrepreneurship, democratic action, and the cultivation of solidarity. Reprint edition. The MIT Press.
Valdés, Orlando. 2003. Historia de La Reforma Agraria En Cuba. Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales.
Williams, Justine M. 2012. Agroecology versus productivism: Competing discourses on the future of Cuban agriculture. MA, Chapel Hill: Anthropology Department at the University of North Carolina.
World Food Program. 2015. WFP Cuba brief. www.wfp.org/countries/cuba.
Wright, Julia. 2009. Sustainable agriculture and food security in an era of oil scarcity : Lessons from Cuba. London ; Sterling, VA: Earthscan.
Acknowledgements
The author wishes to thank the National Science Foundation, the UNC Graduate School, and the UNC Institute for the Study of the America’s for their generous support of various phases of this research and writing. She is also grateful to the Fundación Antonio Núñez Jiménez de la Naturaleza y el Hombre for providing visa sponsorship, support, and mentorship during her fieldwork.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2017 Springer International Publishing AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Williams, J.M. (2017). Building Community Capacity for Food and Agricultural Justice: Lessons from the Cuban Permaculture Movement. In: Werkheiser, I., Piso, Z. (eds) Food Justice in US and Global Contexts. The International Library of Environmental, Agricultural and Food Ethics, vol 24. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-57174-4_4
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-57174-4_4
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-57173-7
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-57174-4
eBook Packages: Religion and PhilosophyPhilosophy and Religion (R0)