Levin Dalpiaz*

I’m writing this from the campus of the Agrarian University of Havana (UNAH), surrounded by students and researchers who move through their work with the practiced resilience of those for whom scarcity is part of daily life. Sitting in the dim light after a blackout, I reflect on these first weeks of fieldwork for my master’s thesis in international development studies. My research deals with the transformation of Cuba’s food system, focusing on urban agriculture in Havana, and how farmers’ experiences of belonging, dignity, and political agency influence their attachments to land.

Getting to campus yesterday morning wasn’t easy. I was confronted with suspended bus lines due to fuel shortages. Without the incredibly kind and creative support of my Cuban supervisors, I would not have made it—like many other students and researchers who had to stay home. The most striking thing is not the absence of electricity and other basic needs (water, gas, and fuel), but the presence of a stubborn, collective conviction that life continues, that work matters, and that another world is possible even in the grip of engineered crisis. Tomorrow, electricity will likely return for a few hours. People will charge their devices, fill up their water tanks, do their work, and prepare for the next blackout. It is a rhythm learned and adapted to.

Before speaking about Cuban agroecology, it is necessary to begin with imperialist violence. The U.S. embargo (“el bloqueo”) has strangled the Cuban economy for sixty-five years, leading to unimaginable damage to society. The “scarcity” mentioned is engineered; it is a weapon of war. Agroecology in Cuba grew during the Special Period after the fall of the Soviet Union as an existential necessity—a way to feed people when imports disappeared and the old industrial model became impossible to maintain. What began as pragmatic adaptation has become something far more profound: a collective project of autonomy and dignity.

During my first week in Cuba, I joined the 9th International Encounter of Agroecology, Food Sovereignty, Nutritional Education and Cooperativism, organized by ANAP, the Cuban smallholder farmer association that unites cooperatives and links directly with La Vía Campesina. The encounter brought together representatives from fifteen countries and took place primarily at ANAP’s education center in Güira de Melena, Artemisa Province. I met farmers from across the island who spoke about their work not as a necessary compromise, but as a superior way of farming—more resilient, more productive, more dignified, and more intelligent than the industrialized model.

My thesis research examines how emotional and affective experiences sustain transformations over time, focusing on urban agriculture. How do feelings of belonging, pride, hope, and frustration shape commitment to institutionalized food sovereignty? How do intimate attachments to land and community become sources of political agency? And what factors influence the emotional and affective experiences of those involved in these practices? Feelings that emerge on Cuban farms are shaped by decades of embargo, by relationships within cooperatives, by the memory of revolution, and by the possibility of feeding one’s neighbors. These emotions drive long-term commitment and transformation at multiple scales: from the way someone feels when farming for the neighborhood on a small plot in Havana, to how cooperatives organize in the city and connect with international food movements.

So far, I have visited 10 urban and suburban farms across Havana Province, on my own and in collaboration with ANAP and UNAH, including small neighborhood plots and larger cooperative structures. Each farm reveals different emotional registers—joy in harvests, frustration about missing equipment, pride in feeding barrios, and a sense of political agency. Growing food in the city as part of a collective becomes an act of quiet defiance: a refusal of dependency and a claim to autonomy and dignity. Urban agriculture in Cuba produces a large share of the vegetables and fruits consumed in major cities, benefiting from shorter supply chains and lower fuel consumption at every step.

All farmers mentioned the essential role of solidarity within the community and across different levels. Without it, survival would be impossible. Intimate attachments to specific places become the basis for collective identities that hold resistance together.

I don’t want to idealize Cuba’s food system. The problems are structural, including internal mismanagement, which contributes to the fact that around 70% of its food is still imported (WFP, 2025). Yet it is important to acknowledge the depth of the U.S. embargo’s impact: Cuba’s Prime Minister Marrero has even described the embargo as a “genocidal policy.” Shortages cut across all sectors, and the farmers I spoke with often lack even the most basic tools, such as machetes and knives. Urban agriculture sits at the crossroads of these forces: a space where (inter)national politics, state policies, and grassroots initiatives collide, producing a complex, sometimes contradictory space of struggle and agency. I often heard farmers describe their work as a fight across all scales under the harshest conditions. The maxim of urban farming captures this spirit: “Si el hombre sirve, la tierra sirve” (“If the human serves, the land serves”), a quote from the national hero himself, José Martí.

Over the next two months of fieldwork, I want to deepen my understanding through intensive engagement with urban farmers, cooperative members, and institutional actors. I’m curious about how new policies on food sovereignty and agroecology intersect with grassroots movements. Their quiet, stubborn insistence under blockade and crisis shows that Cuban urban agriculture is an everyday practice of sovereignty and resistance.

* Levin Dalpiaz studies the Master International Development at Wageningen University