Interesting article from Harper’s a couple month’s back, about how Cuba was forced to overhaul its agricultural infrastructure.

But it’s hard to improvise food. So much of what Cubans had eaten had come straight from Eastern Europe, and most of the rest was grown industrial-style on big state farms. All those combines needed fuel and spare parts, and all those big rows of grain and vegetables needed pesticides and fertilizer—none of which were available. In 1989, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, the average Cuban was eating 3,000 calories per day. Four years later that figure had fallen to 1,900. It was as if they suddenly had to skip one meal a day, every day, week after month after year. The host of one cooking show on the shortened TV schedule urged Cubans to fry up “steaks” made from grapefruit peels covered in bread crumbs. “I lost twenty pounds myself,” said Fernando Funes, a government agronomist.

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