The U. S. sponsored far-reaching trade embargo in the 1960's forced Castro’s Cuba to forge trade links with the Soviets in order to survive. The reinforced embargos that followed only made matters worse. For over 30 years the support that Cuba received from the USSR virtually kept the island nation alive. The collapse of the Soviet bloc cast Cuba's whole economic system into crisis.

The USSR purchased sugar for many times the going market rate. There were similar artificially favorable deals on oil and petrochemicals, including fertilizers. From 1959 to 1989, well over 80% of Cuba’s trade was with the USSR.

In 1989, the Soviet Union was having trouble paying for its own needs. Imports dropped overall by 2/3. Favorable Soviet petroleum arrangements dropped by over 1/2. The Castro controlled government was close to collapse. The controlled and un-controlled black market economies were drastically affected by the crumbling of Cuba's Soviet international trading partners.

Cuba, since the revolution, has existed for virtually every person not favored by the central government on a subsistence economy. Availability of affordable food literally held the island's population together. Tragically, the most noticeable impact of the collapse was on the food supply. Approximately 60% of Cuba’s sustenance was imported. Estimates are that greater than 80% of all the protein and fats were imported.

The trade embargo imposed by the United States along with the collapse of the important Soviet relationship meant that Cuba had no practical access to agricultural chemicals and the machinery necessary to provide the food needed.

The number one priority for the government was to increase food production. The task at hand was to produce twice as much food with less than 1/3 of the chemical nutrients. Cuba's dependency on machinery, needing fuel and oil and artificial petrochemical based fertilizers and insecticides, meant that the soils were in poor condition, having been adulterated by agricultural chemicals and tragically salinized by excessive and ill-advised irrigation methods.

Cuba has been forced to make organic farming a national priority. On an emergency basis, Cuba has turned to farming much of its land organically, with some amazing and well documented successes. Today, sustainable organic methods of cultivation are bringing back domestic food production and making better use of the country's limited resources.

Large tracts of land have been converted from export-oriented cash crops to food crops for local consumption. Government incentives encourage people in urban centers to till the land for their own benefit. Oxen have been bred and trained in large numbers replacing the tractors for which there is no fuel or oil as well as plowing and transporting crops to processing and market as they did before the dawn of the 20th century. Organic methods such as localized integrated pest management, crop replacement and rotation and community scale composting and soil conservation have been implemented and perfected. Sophisticated techniques such as worm composting, soil inoculants and bio-pesticides are commonly utilized. Hundreds of bio-pesticide production facilities have been set up. These are, for the most part, managed and manned by locals.

Cuba must and is trying to change the very structure of its agricultural industry. The huge state farms are being cut up and parceled out to local coops and to individual farmers. In the cities, much of the unused land has been made available for individual cultivation, creating a vast system of organic urban gardens. The more than 8,000 gardens in Havana alone produced a reported 500,000 tons of food in 1998. These account for an ever higher percentage of the food needed in some areas.

Cuba has, of necessity, emerged as a leader in organic agriculture. Its research and development at the university level and its local extension agencies have advanced organic farming methods on a large scale. The National Institute for Basic Research in Tropical Agriculture (Instituto Nacional de Investigación de Viandas Tropicales - INIFAT) has research centers around  the country that specialize in answering the specific problems of their area.

The Plant Protection Research Institute (PPRI) has created over 200 centers for the production and reproduction of biological control agents. These are located throughout the country, supplying local farmers and gardeners on every scale with needed innovative and specifically useful biological products.

With so many questions about food quality in the United States and around the world, Cuba offers a well documented case study where alternatives are practiced, and where there is increased production and success in improved food security and environmental preservation.