La agricultura en Cuba: Evolución y trayectoria (1959-2005) (review)

Armando Nova is the most prolific Cuban agricultural economist, author of twenty publications since 1988. This book is a compilation of his previous works updated to 2005. Amply documented with 196 statistical tables, 25 graphs, and a bibliography, it is a comprehensive, objective analysis of Cuba's agricultural problems and recommendations to correct them.

Nova's evaluation of agricultural performance until 1989 shows that, despite significant investment, results were poor: the cattle stock sharply declined as a result of low reproductive efficiency, a decline in milking cows and grass-feeding areas, and high labor-force instability. In the diary sector, egg production also decreased as a result of dwindling productivity induced by inadequate fodder supply and veterinary care. Among bovine producers, despite the lack of labor incentives, pork output increased but efficiency diminished. Sugar, Cuba's greatest export, experienced drastic declines in yields caused by the low production of sugarcane and delays in inputs supply. Per capita production of grains, beans, fruits, and coffee shrank, and only citrus and vegetables grew. In the state sector there was a rise in the number of tractors but low working hours and maintenance; high consumption of fertilizers but a loss of 30 percent production; a growth of 18 percent in the labor force but a 12 percent decline in its productivity; and an increase in allocation of raw materials and/or resources to skilled workers but a declining capital-output ratio. Conversely, the nonstate sector exhibited higher output and yields despite its limited size, minimum input, and absence of low technology. This was explained by better incentives and efficiency. All this impeded an increase in agricultural exports and a cut of food-import dependence. The fundamental agricultural problem was not related to technology, investment, or human-material resources, but to highly concentrated state ownership and low wages that alienated workers. Nova recommends "important economic, structural and organizational transformations to accomplish the needed reactivation and efficiency" (20) so that workers behave or participate as owners and get incentives to increase output, for example, by liberalizing cooperatives and private farms.

The 1990s economic crisis forced positive agricultural reforms (some recommended previously) albeit with restrictions that obstructed their potentiality. The new cooperatives' unidas básicas de producción cooperativa (UBPC) yields have declined because they are obligated to sell to the state 70 percent of output at government-set prices, lower than market prices and production costs, aggravated by escalating prices of fuel, fertilizer, input, and centrally allocated services; because sugar, cattle, rice, and citric UBPCs cannot sell to free agricultural markets their produce or surplus after meeting state quotas; UBPCs lack autonomy to decide to whom sell and set prices; they lost workers as a result of nonguaranteed food self-consumption and low income; half are in debt for the original equipment sold by the state; and a significant part has low efficiency and is unprofitable. Sugarcane UBPCs produce 74 percent of total output but are not autonomous and state supply is inadequate; their numbers have decreased and the remainder's size increased, making their management difficult. Thirty percent lack sowed sugarcane, half plant at improper time, poor weeding results in two million-ton losses, many lack equipment or use equipment in poor repair, the seed quality is inferior, availability of fertilizer is 10 percent lower than in the 1980s, and 15-20 percent of the cane is lost during cutting. Only 43 percent pay members according to results, labor income is unrelated to the world market price, self-food consumption is insufficient, and there is not enough housing, all of which explain sharply declining output.

Free agricultural markets suffer from quasi-monopolistic supply by private farmers because of the incapacity of cooperatives to participate, the banning of some products, the increasing costs of market services, inadequate taxes, and intermediaries' power in price setting. After an initial decline, prices have risen since 1998, hurting consumers (particularly low-income consumers) who must buy in those markets...