Alternative to What? Agroecology, Food Sovereignty, and Cuba's Agricultural Revolution

In Cuba, the transition from industrial agriculture towards agroecology since the Special Period of the early 1990s has provided both an incredible example for alternative, sustainable food systems elsewhere as well as its own suite of challenges and struggles. This paper reviews recent literature on the Cuban agroecological transition, especially as this work situates Cuban agroecology in practice alongside the increasingly popular political framework of food sovereignty. In particular, this paper highlights the unique synergies between agroecology and food sovereignty, as well as the unique tensions that arise in applying these frameworks to the Cuban context. By probing the question as to what the Cuban agroecological experience represents an “alternative,” a more inclusive definition of food sovereignty is developed to better accommodate not only Cuban agroecology, but alternative food systems more broadly. Rather than simply an alternative to capitalist food systems or the globalized corporate food regime, agroecology, food sovereignty and other alternatives instead represent a more fundamental critique of industrialization and modernity. Building off of the specific contours of agroecological practice within Cuban Socialism, it is argued that food sovereignty in Cuba is an expression of what James Ferguson has recently termed “distributive political economy.” By applying this distributive political economic framework to the Cuban agroecological experience, the author aims not only to address some of the underlying tensions with traditional definitions of food sovereignty, but also to provide an actionable agenda for future research in Cuba and beyond.