Cuba: A Successful Case Study of Sustainable Agriculture by Peter Rossett (Ch 12, in 'Hungry for Profit: The Agribusiness Threat to Farmers, Food and the Environment'

Economic development in Cuba was molded by two external forces between the 1959 revolution and the 1989-90 collapse of trading relations with the Soviet bloc. One was the U.S. trade embargo, part of an effort to isolate the island economically and politically. The other was Cuba's entry into the Soviet bloc's international trade alliance with relatively favorable terms of trade. The U.S. embargo essentially forced Cuba to turn to the Soviet bloc, while the terms of trade offered by the latter opened the possibility of more rapid development on the island than in the rest of Latin America and the Caribbean.