He wishes to thank Professor Carmen Diana Deere of the Department of Economics at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, for reading and commenting upon this article. The author recommends that those wishing to pursue this subject further read Professor Deere's excellent article, "Reforming Cuban Agriculture," appearing in the October 1997 edition of Development and Change, vol. 28, pp. 649-69, from which some of the statistical and other factual material in the present article has been drawn.