The agrarian reforms in Cuba sought to break up large landholdings and redistribute land to those peasants who worked it, to cooperatives, and the state. Laws relating to land reform were implemented in a series of laws passed between 1959 and 1963 after the Cuban Revolution. The Institutio Nacional de Reforma Agraria (INRA)—an agency of the Cuban government responsible to implement the first and second Agrarian Reforms. The agency adapted the Soviet model of organisation—small collectives (Asociación Nacional de Agricultures Pequeños) and large(er) state farms.

First agrarian reform law under Che Guevara

On January 27, 1959, Che Guevara made one of his most significant speeches where he talked about "the social ideas of the rebel army." During this speech, he declared that the main concern of the new Cuban government was "the social justice that land redistribution brings about."^[1]

In most of Cuba the peasants had been progressively proletarianized due to the needs of large-scale, semi-mechanized capitalist agriculture. They had reached a new level of organization and therefore a greater class consciousness. In fact the Sierra Maestra, the site of the first revolutionary settlement, is a place where peasants who had struggled against large landholders took refuge. They went there seeking new land — somehow overlooked by the state or the voracious landholders — on which to earn a modest income. They struggled constantly against the demands of the soldiers, always allied to the landholders, and their ambitions extended no further than a property deed. The peasants who belonged to our first guerrilla armies came from that section of this social class which most strongly shows love for the land and the possession of it; that is to say, which most perfectly demonstrates the petty-bourgeois spirit. Despite their petty-bourgeois spirit, the peasants soon learned that they could not satisfy their desire to possess land without breaking up the large landholding system. Radical agrarian reform, the only type that could give land to the peasants, clashed directly with the interests of the imperialists, the large landholders and the sugar and cattle magnates. The bourgeoisie was afraid to clash with those interests but the proletariat was not. In this way the course of the revolution itself brought the workers and peasants together. The workers supported the demands of the peasants against the large landholders. The poor peasants, rewarded with ownership of land, loyally supported the revolutionary power and defended it against its imperialist and counter-revolutionary enemies.

— Che Guevara, April 9, 1961 ^[2]

Following the success of the Cuban Revolution, the first wave of land reforms was the first major institutional change. According to ^[3] Botella-Rodriguez and Gonzalez-Esteban (2021), the first reforms were implemented in May 1959, which eliminated latifunidos—large scale private ownerships and granted ownership and titles to workers who previously worked on those lands, as well as previously foreign-owned land, especially in the rural areas were nationalised, and exploitative conditions such as paying rent for land were abolished. Additionally, it given that the agriculture sector is a significant driver of Cuba's economy, the state scaled up its direct ownership. The Agrarian Reform Law called for and crafted by Guevara went into effect, limiting the size of farms to 3,333 acres (13 km²) and real estate to 1,000 acres (4 km²). Any holdings over these limits were expropriated by the government and either redistributed to peasants in 67 acres (271,139 m²) parcels or held as state-run communes.^[4] This caused almost 40% of arable land to be removed from foreign owners and corporations to the state, which then distributed these lands primarily to farmers and agricultural workers. This arrangement gave small peasant farmers limited autonomy, but it all changed in August 1962 when Castro announced that the small cooperatives would be converted to state farmers. Moreover, in instances where government seizes land from small peasants for public use, the small peasants are entitled to compensations. In the case for Cuba, compensations, though wrote into the reforms, were not guaranteed when land titles were liquidised under the state.^[5] The law also stipulated that sugar plantations could not be owned by foreigners. For lands taken over compensation was offered in the form of Cuban currency bonds to mature in 20 years at 4.5% interest.^[6] Bonds were based on land values as assessed for tax purposes.^[6] Lastly, two years into the implementation of the first agrarian land reforms, approximately 58.4 per cent of arable land was privately owned, while 41.6 per cent was under government control, which required a second wave of reforms.^[7] Both of these reforms were carried out for the purpose of increasing production, diversifying crop production, and eliminating rural poverty.

Second agrarian reform law

The second agrarian reforms solidified the centralisation of state farms and nationalisations of land and other natural resources. The second agrarian reforms were introduced in 1963 to further limit the allowable size of private farms—all property holdings over 67 hectares became nationalised. Thus, these reforms allowed for the state farmlands to dominate the agricultural sector—70 per cent of the arable land was under the state control and the government became the largest employer, while 30 per cent was privately owned. As a result, between 80 and 85 per cent of Cuba's land was expropriated. The centralisation of Cuba's economy through farming had advantages—productions of meat, milk, rice, and sugarcane increased exponentially. However, these advancements fell short in meeting the demands of the populous when it comes to root vegetables and fruits. These supply-demand shortages were a direct result of the economic organisation—private farmers used to be the ones to produce these goods. However, as the state centralised agricultural production, the participation of private farmers decreased.^[8] As a result of the state's dominant position in agriculture, the first and second agrarian reforms transformed Cuba's natural resource organisation. First, the reforms abolished the latifunidos — Cuba was able to return to pre-colonial way of organising — small farmers, cooperatives style, social and financial services such as the Credit and Services Cooperatives (CSS) developed to support the new way of organising. However, the elimination of one kind of hegemony created another. Although implementing the Soviet model of supply distribution (implementing farming tools and inputs) had positive results in terms of increased the production of large-scale crops such as sugar cane and improved infrastructure, it also led to Cuba's dependent on the Soviet Union. Not only did the biodiversity and environment suffer, but Cuba also grew to be dependent on the Soviet Union for its production and supply inputs, making it vulnerable to external shocks. When the Soviet Bloc collapsed in the 1990s, Cuba had to explore alternative solutions to sustain its production. To fill the gap of production inputs, the state encouraged cooperatives: small farmers using traditional peasant knowledge of production and returning to animal traction, at a lower cost and less damage to the environment. The state implemented the Basic Units of Cooperative Production (UBPCs), which limited the sizes of state farms.^[9]