Urban Agriculture: The Cuban Experience

Abstract

Written by the President of the Antonio Núñez Jiménez Foundation for Nature and Humanity (Cuba), this article presents Cuba's urban-agriculture experience within the framework of the Urban Agriculture Network for Latin America and the Caribbean, established in 1995. The author contextualizes this practice's development within the crisis of the 1990s "Special Period," when the collapse of the Eastern European socialist bloc created critical import dependence, prompting the Cuban State to authorize the use of vacant public spaces for agricultural production with technical support, institutionalized in 1994. The text presents concrete results: 40,000 hectares dedicated to vegetables across all the country's cities, more than 200,000 new jobs created, and 1,600 hectares of agricultural production within Havana, concluding with the challenges of consolidating urban agriculture as a permanent urban function integrated into land-use planning.