Cuba’s right to grow, process and eat its own food is under siege.

In July, the U.S. State Department announced a new round of sweeping economic sanctions against Cuba , targeting industries that had historically been exempt, limiting the Cuban government’s ability to purchase agricultural products and food processing equipment from third countries, by specifically targeting Cuba’s state importer (GECOMEX) and port operator (GEMAR).

This comes against the backdrop of the US oil embargo against Cuba , which has been in place for months and has already impoverished the general population by hindering basic sanitation and food security, and has killed dozens of patients in Cuban hospitals. A US congressional delegation that visited the island in early July described the situation on the ground as a “silent Gaza.”

Given this context, it may be surprising to learn that the United States remains one of Cuba’s main trading partners, having exported over $828 million worth of goods last year. Behind the apparent contradiction of the United States sanctioning a country with which it does business lies a strategy as old as imperialism itself. The United States is perfectly willing to sell Cuba food and other select goods, but it wants a monopoly on that trade.

A regulatory compliance nightmare

For decades, U.S. sanctions against Cuba targeted captive industries such as mining and tourism, both important sources of foreign currency for the Cuban government. During that time, the United States refrained from sanctioning entities that import certain goods into Cuba, since those transactions involve the outflow of foreign currency from the country, very often to U.S. companies, paid for in full and in advance.

Mining operations and hotel chains operating in Cuba are accustomed to navigating complex regulatory environments (as are most large companies in those industries). They also tend to be smaller, privately held companies. But the fact that the State Department specifically singled out GECOMEX and GEMAR, which facilitate the physical import and export of virtually everything entering and leaving the island, raises compliance risks for manufacturing and shipping companies. This, in itself, constitutes a significant escalation.

For example, a firm like the Bühler Group, a Swiss industrial conglomerate, now faces regulatory noncompliance risks if it sells grain milling equipment to Cuba. The same applies to a company from a third country that might sell machinery for cleaning and sorting legumes. If GECOMEX cannot import equipment, its subsidiaries cannot efficiently process basic agricultural products like wheat and beans, which in turn reduces the amount of staple foods reaching Cuban households.

The sanctions against GEMAR, the port operator, are even more direct, as they create risks of regulatory non-compliance for any shipping company that pays berthing fees. More than 7,000 containers destined for Havana are now stranded at various points in the Caribbean, after companies like Hapag-Lloyd and CMA CGM suspended their operations with Cuba. Therefore, although humanitarian exceptions exist that allow third countries to import food into Cuba, this new round of sanctions could seriously hinder those shipments.

“These kinds of measures demonstrate the genocidal intent behind the United States’ ‘maximum pressure’ strategy,” says Helen Yaffe, a professor at the University of Glasgow and author of * We Are Cuba! How a Revolutionary People Have Survived in a Post-Soviet World* . “Food insecurity is a terrible vulnerability imposed on Cuba by its colonial and imperial history. The entire country was turned into a sugarcane field.”

The ups and downs of Cuban agriculture

Immediately after the revolution, the Cuban government nationalized the largest agricultural properties, plantations, and estates, while leaving many small peasant farms independent. During the Special Period (following the collapse of the Soviet Union), Fidel Castro approved Cuba’s Third Agrarian Reform, which allocated more land to cooperatives and family farmers through usufruct rights. This decentralized agricultural production from the government, transforming import-dependent state farms into Basic Units of Cooperative Production.

“Farmer-to-farmer networks trained more than 200,000 farming families in agroecological methods,” says Margarita Fernández of the Caribbean Agroecology Institute (CAI), which promotes sustainable agricultural practices and food sovereignty. During the Special Period, urban gardens (organoponics) proliferated in Havana, and the Cuban government estimated that more than 50 percent of the fruits and vegetables consumed in the capital were grown there.

In his book The Greening of the Revolution , food rights activist Peter Rosset argues that it was “the largest attempt to convert from conventional to alternative, semi-organic agriculture in world history.” “For a time, Cuba became a global symbol of what post-oil agriculture could be,” says Fernández.

At the height of this movement, in the mid-2000s, between 35 and 40 percent of all calories consumed in Cuba came from domestic agriculture. However, the Special Period finally ended once Cuba developed a closer trade relationship with Venezuela under Hugo Chávez. Once again, Cuba had access to the petroleum inputs that make industrial agriculture possible.

“As economic conditions intermittently improved, policymakers often reverted to conventional industrial agriculture,” says Fernández. “Agroecology never became fully institutionalized as the foundation of the food system. Instead, it was treated as an emergency substitute,” the researcher explained.

In fact, crop and livestock yields were already declining before the Special Period. During the late 1980s, Cuba’s industrial agricultural model led to severe soil compaction and degradation, causing a drop in non-sugar agricultural production.

Yields had also been declining in recent years before the United States took control of the Venezuelan government in January and triggered the current crisis. Between 2018 and 2023, the domestic harvest of staple crops such as rice fell by more than 50 percent. The U.S. branch of the World Food Programme estimates that Cuba now relies on agricultural imports to meet between 70 and 80 percent of its needs.

That might not seem like a huge reduction, but it’s important to remember that not all calories are created equal. Historically, Cuba has maintained 90 percent self-sufficiency in fruits and vegetables, which are packed with vitamins and fiber but contain very little protein. However, Cuba today produces less than 1 percent of the chicken it consumes, and its pork industry recently collapsed.

To make matters worse, the ongoing oil blockade has reduced domestic agricultural production by 60 percent, according to a June report by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. “The ration book is now worn out,” says Helen Yaffe. The sanctions in July are likely to exacerbate this situation.

Cooperatives and family farmers currently manage around 69 percent of Cuba’s agricultural land, though not all of them employ sustainable farming practices. Many still rely on gasoline and diesel-powered irrigation methods. And while the use of biofertilizers and biopesticides, instead of fossil fuel derivatives, is widespread, these depend on reliable transportation to distribute live cultures from laboratories to remote fields before they spoil—virtually impossible given the brutal U.S. energy embargo.

Estimates vary, but proponents of these practices argue that expanding agroecology could reduce dependence on agricultural imports by 35 to 40 percent. Others calculate that it could cover 70 percent of all calories consumed in Cuba. This would also help reduce agricultural trade deficits, which organizations like the CAI consider an obstacle to greater food sovereignty. Cuban spending on foreign agricultural imports totaled $2.7 billion in 2024, dominated by meat ($458 million) and grains ($177 million).

Cuba also has to contend with an aggressive northern neighbor that not only limits its ability to trade freely and receive fuel, but also fiercely defends its existing markets. “Any attempt to produce food for local consumption is resisted by the U.S. agricultural lobby,” says Yaffe.

A markedly unfree market

Of the food Cuba imports, $403 million comes from the United States, $328 million from Argentina, and $282 million from Brazil. But, again, not all calories are created equal. Cuba imports 85 percent of its wheat from Canada and—perhaps more importantly—80 percent of its chicken from the United States.

Frozen chicken legs and feet are the most affordable and readily available animal protein in the Cuban diet. Cuba has been one of the top five export markets for U.S. chicken for more than a decade, ahead of countries with enormous populations like the Philippines and China. Last year, the United States exported $298 million worth of chicken to Cuba, almost all of it in the form of frozen legs and feet. And the latest sanctions are expected to further tip the balance of agricultural trade in favor of the United States.

Canadian agribusiness is unlikely to find any benefit in continuing the 278 million Canadian dollars of agricultural trade with Cuba, given the risks of regulatory noncompliance that have already forced a major mining company, under financial pressure, to sell to a US buyer allied with Donald Trump. By comparison, Canada conducted more than 100 billion Canadian dollars in agricultural trade in 2024, 62 percent of which was with the United States.

“If a third country supplies goods or services to a blocked party, it can be blocked,” explains Robert Muse, a leading attorney specializing in U.S. laws and regulations concerning Cuba. “And then, anyone who supplies goods or services to that party can also be blocked… and so on.” Title III of the Helms-Burton Act, which exposes private companies to lawsuits if they trade in assets expropriated during the Cuban Revolution, can, in theory, be extended without limit.

Besides their desire for access to the U.S. market, there is at least one other reason why companies don’t rebel against these unnecessary default risks: “The international banking system and the supremacy of the U.S. dollar prevent companies from fighting back,” says Helen Yaffe. Dollar transactions, which account for the majority of global trade, need to go through the U.S. banking system.

This leaves Cuba with only one frictionless trading partner: the country it is currently trying to dismantle its government. “U.S. companies will be the preferred investors in the ‘new Cuba’ that the United States is trying to build through secondary sanctions,” says Muse.

Molding Cuba in the image of Latin American countries like Guatemala, trapped in a relationship of dependency and unequal exchange with the United States, appears to be the ultimate ambition of the Trump administration. Regarding the role of agriculture in this grand strategy, “the United States’ leverage over the Cuban government increases as the amount of food Cuba imports from there increases,” says Muse.

This may help explain this latest round of sanctions. By leaving humanitarian exceptions in place while targeting the port industry and importers, the United States can claim it is not prohibiting food imports to Cuba, even as it causes a collapse in both domestic food production and food imports. “The effect is multiplied by the existing food shortages. Cuba may be getting 16 percent of its food from the United States, but if you take away the other 84 percent, it’s a catastrophe,” says Muse.

For now, most of the world is unwilling to risk access to the U.S. market and payment and credit systems by continuing to trade with Cuba. However, pressure for an alternative continues to grow as the United States’ volatile trade policies and unilateral sanctions regime come under increasing strain in the context of trade disruptions linked to the Iran-Contra affair. “If Cuba could still trade with the rest of the world, it could thrive,” says Yaffe.

The US government has exploited the unlimited reach of the Helms-Burton Act and the hegemony of the dollar to create a regulatory environment and sanctions regime so severe that no rational actor would dare challenge it. At the same time, its oil embargo has made food sovereignty through an industrial agricultural model virtually impossible, leaving Cuba dependent on US agribusiness for cheap protein.

Meanwhile, banking, mining, and tourism sanctions have deprived Cuba of the foreign currency it needs to finance a transition to more sustainable agricultural models. In other words, while the United States seeks to overthrow the Cuban government and open the country to American private ownership, it is using access to food as the ultimate leverage.