Figueroa Alfonso, Galia: Soviet tractors vs. oxen : agroecology, agricultural policies and political discourse in Cuba. - Bonn, 2022. - Dissertation, Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn.
Online-Ausgabe in bonndoc: https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:hbz:5-68213
@phdthesis{handle:20.500.11811/10510,
urn: https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:hbz:5-68213,
author = {{Galia Figueroa Alfonso}},
title = {Soviet tractors vs. oxen : agroecology, agricultural policies and political discourse in Cuba},
school = {Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn},
year = 2022,
month = dec,

note = {After the collapse of the socialist bloc in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the Cuban government was forced to forsake its plans to develop a modern agricultural sector, highly dependent on the intensive use of imported machinery, fertilizers and pesticides. A set of circumstances led to the practice of low-input agriculture taking on the name Agroecology that had been used in Latin American contexts. This particular context motivated two narratives, the narrative of opportunity, namely that Cuba became an ideal natural setting for large-scale conversion to agroecological agriculture, and the narrative of the victory of alternative agriculture in Cuba (mainly recreated from abroad). However, the study of the institutionalization processes of the agroecological movement, agricultural policies and the results of agroecological practices show a more complex story than what these narratives reproduce.
The specific trajectory of scaling up the agroecological movement in Cuba provides a valuable case for the analysis of the influences of the political environment on the adoption of alternative agricultural practices. Some pro-agroecological experts place the barriers to the scaling up of the agroecological movement in Cuba in the permanence of mentalities akin to the conventional model, situating the debate in the technological sphere. This thesis broadens this debate by considering the scaling up of the movement as a political-economic phenomenon as well, and brings the discussion to the field of political economy and the Cuban socialist model.
How do agricultural policy-making and policy beliefs of the Cuban government relate to agroecological principles and practices, and how do they shape the processes (and limits) of scaling (up and out) of the Cuban agroecological movement? This thesis assesses the points of coherence and conflict between 1) the history of the agricultural policy of the revolution (i.e., post-1959) and the practice of agroecology in Cuba, and 2) the political beliefs of the government (identified in political discourse) and the principles and practices of agroecology in Cuba. Through the analysis of point 1), the thesis questions the validity of the assumptions surrounding the triumph of Cuban agroecology and provides a more nuanced view on the limits of the results of agroecology on the island. From the analysis of point 2), the thesis makes visible the long-standing contradictions between the political beliefs of the Cuban government and the essential principles of agroecology related to scale, markets, ownership, as well as autonomy and the expected attitudes and motivations of producers.
The study is based on the analysis of 247 official policy and normative documents, 322 speeches (by the Castros between 1984 and 2015), the testimonies of 105 interviewees, secondary literature on Cuba’s political and economic history, and the analysis of secondary data related to agricultural performance. The thesis argues that the processes of scaling up and out of agroecological practices in Cuba have been an expression of the (contradictory, ambivalent) accommodation between the principles and practices of agroecology and the government’s different policy choices in agriculture (on issues such as land use, markets, producer autonomy) and the behaviors that the government expected from agricultural actors. The latter two had been influenced by the policy beliefs of the government (state-party) in line with the official socialist ideology.},

url = {https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11811/10510}
}

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