Cuba, however, refused to give up on building a socialist society — maintaining, for example, its universal free healthcare and education — while it entered into the period of economic hardship known as the "Special Period", and the United States tightened its decades-long blockade of the country.
During this time, however, it faced an even more challenging crisis: securing food to sustain the population. Over half the country's food had come from the USSR, and most of its petroleum, fertilisers and pesticides were imports.
Early in the "Special Period", a number of Australians travelled to Cuba to introduce permaculture, a form of sustainable, low-input agriculture. The ideas were eagerly taken up by the Cuban government as part of its policy of "linking people with the land". The government immediately set about creating urban agricultural cooperatives and investing in biotechnology and agricultural science.
Cuban agriculture is now over 95% organic, and the city of Havana itself now produces over 60% of its fruit and vegetables within the city's urban and peri-urban spaces, in community gardens and cooperatives.
