Diet and the Health of the Poor: Strategies for Increasing the Consumption of Animal Protein in Cuba, from 1943 to the “Special Period” of the 1990s and Beyond

Reinaldo Funes Monzote
Professor of History, University of Havana

Tuesday, March 15 @ 4pm
University of Michigan
Haven Hall room 2608 

Reinaldo Funes Monzote is Director of the Geo-Historical Research Program at the Antonio Núñez Jiménez Foundation (Cuba) and professor of History at the University of Havana. His talk will link changing patterns of consumption, agriculture production, and the international preoccupation with food safety to the construction of state socialism in Cuba.

Since World War II, development policies in the Global South have focused on the diet of poor populations, with particular emphasis on the need to increase animal protein consumption. This talk examines policies surrounding animal protein production and consumption in Cuba during the fifty years following the Hot Spring Conference for Food and Agriculture in 1943 (a conference which created the institutional framework for the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization). It will pay special attention to changes that occurred after the 1959 Revolution, specifically to government-led efforts to redirect cattle farming from beef to dairy production. Previous studies have tended to analyze agricultural production and food processing as separate processes. The goal of this paper is to integrate the two against the background of the Cold War and the construction of a socialist system. The paper will conclude by considering shifts in animal protein production and consumption in Cuba after the collapse of the agro-industrial system during the Special Period in the 1990s.

Sponsored by the Environmental History Interest Group and UM Law School