LET THEM EAT MARABU:

Dirt Poor in the Workers' Paradise (Blake Hurst, 03/23/2009, Weekly Standard)

Cuban agriculture in the age of the USSR was crazy. The Soviets sold Cuba fertilizer at below-market prices, with which to raise sugar--on inefficient, irrational, ideologically correct collective farms--that Cuba then sold back to the Soviets at above-market prices. The improvements since the end of the Soviet era have come not because a sense of community has been engendered by the necessity of adapting premodern kinds of farming, but because market incentives are sneaking in around the edges of a moribund and cruel system.

Even so, promoters of present-day Cuba tend to gloss over a few facts. Like the fact that the ration coupons allow for only about half of the needed calories and that agriculture is so inefficient that Cubans spend about 50 to 70 percent of their gross income supplementing the food available through the state system. More than a quarter of the Cuban work force is, moreover, involved in agriculture.

A recent article in the Cuban press, noted in a study by the USDA's Office of Global Analysis, quoted a high-level Cuban ministry of agriculture official who revealed that 84 percent of all food consumed in Cuba is imported. CNN reports that Raúl Castro is moving to boost food production by putting more land under the control of private farmers. State-run television claims that half of all agricultural land in Cuba is not farmed or is farmed in an unproductive manner. According to CNN, "A thorny bush called marabu fills many of the unused fields and has become a symbol for the failure of agriculture. Last year, Raúl Castro himself bitterly joked about how much of it he could see along the highway."

So, according to American visitors, the symbols of Cuban agriculture are full markets and happy farmers tilling their urban plots of organic vegetables. According to the Cubans themselves, the symbol is the marabu bush.