Urban agriculture in Cuba : alternative legal structures, crisis and change

The dominant mode of feeding Australian cities is the industrial food system, including industrial agriculture. This food system has produced crises in public health in the form of rising incidence of non-communicable disease linked to diet; and crises in environmental health flowing from industrial agriculture and the food processing and distribution network. This chapter discusses the urban agriculture program implemented in Cuba in the mid-1990s 'Special Period' in response to a food security crisis, as an example of legal change in response to food system failure. The Cuban experience is analysed by drawing on Blomley's work on legal geography methodological tools of performativity, and pragmatism (specifically Dewey's writings on 'habit'). It is concluded that changes to the law and policy underpinning Australia's dysfunctional urban food system might be catalysed by framing and communicating the health and ecological problems in the language of crisis, and by responding to this food system crisis by experimenting with alternatives such as urban agriculture.