The Bad News (We Know) about Agriculture in Cuba
HAVANA TIMES – Cuba is facing what is probably the greatest agricultural crisis in its history and the Government doesn’t have a clear strategy to fix it. This is the conclusion from statements made by the Minister of Agriculture, Ydael Perez Brito, on the TV show Mesa Redonda, on October 27, 2023.
His words can be boiled down to his call for “everyone who can to take to the fields.” This is how they are trying to make up for a shortage of imported resources, which are essential for modern agriculture. The problem is that this formula has been used in the past, without success.
With only 15% of the population living in rural areas and an even smaller percentage working in agriculture and cattle ranching, the island would need to mechanize the majority of agricultural jobs and increase the use of fertilizers and other chemical products.
But ever since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, availability of fuel for agriculture fell almost 60%, imported fodder for cattle dropped by 80%, and industrial fertilizers by 96%.
The Cuban Government has insisted for years now that it isn’t worth investing in chemical fertilizers, fuel and other resources for agricultural production, a theory that the Minister of Agriculture, Ydael Perez Brito, defended wholeheartedly.
“We have to join families’ efforts” with popular sowing campaigns, because “the objective is to increase production and replace imports,” he said.
One of the examples he used was corn, with Cuba producing over 400,000 tons in 2016, but it has fallen by 70% because of a lack of supplies. His statements contradict the reality such as results from an experimental harvest that took place in April 2023 in Artemisa.
There, a field that had every modern agricultural resource available used on it managed to triple the average national yield and do it for 166 USD per ton, less than half the price of this grain on the international market. With investments trickling in, agriculture could satisfy most of the country’s needs and become an important source of foreign currency for exports.
The Minister insisted that “there are unexploited reserves that we need to allocate to it,” but he didn’t go into the effects this lack of resources has on agricultural production and especially on the food that makes it to Cuban tables.
“Not enough production is the main reason for high prices,” he recognized at another point in his TV appearance, before comparing today’s indicators of different sectors and national demand.
Cuba would need 200,000 tons of pork every year and it’s producing no more than 20,000; 5 million eggs every day compared to the less than 3 million that are collected; and 500 million liters of milk every year, and it’s falling under 200 million.
If this trend continues, 2023 could end up being one of the worst years in Cuban livestock history. Outstanding payments to dairy producers, and the State’s inability to guarantee at least basic levels of fuel and other resources, are harming livestock activities.
The situation is even more difficult with rice and beans. In 2018, it seemed like half of national consumption of rice could be covered, and all of bean consumption, but harvests of both crops have plummeted.
After five years, we still don’t have the agrochemicals we need to do away with pests such as bean flower thrips, which destroyed plantations all over the country in a matter of months. In 2022, rice production was around 100,000 tons (the country needs 700,000) and bean production was 10,000 (we need 100,000).
In the case of coffee, demand to cover the rations and other domestic consumption is 24,000 tons. It is estimated that only 9,000 tons will be produced in 2023, just 38%.
On the TV show, the official referred to the issue of crime in rural areas, a problem that quite a few farmers have complained about for months now, and crime rates have shot up with blackouts and shortages.
In the face of such a situation, the Government has decided to opt for “different agricultures,” Perez Brito explained, where large-scale productions with state-led companies should coexist with self-sufficiency projects in municipalities and workplaces, on farms and family backyards. He also defended the need to look for joint investment with foreign investors or between new private national economic actors.
The latter proposal suggests a change in attitude towards private enterprise, with the majority having remained outside the agricultural sector up until now.
We still have to see if the partnership model conceived by the Ministry of Agriculture replicates those that already exist in sectors such as the food industry, like the different resources MSMEs and non-agricultural cooperatives are importing.
“From each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs.”
A reply to Stephen Farmers should be limited to owning up to 100 acres each member of the co op the rest owned by the gov and leased on 10 yr leases. Used equipment is available and new equipment from India and China that is affordable. It is best to limit each co op to about 1000 hectares of workable land in size as in cuba labor is cheaper than larger equipment. The gov needs to step back and turn at least 30% over to this or people will continue have bigger problems with food supplies and allow small transport private companies of both people and goods of upto 50 power units each and 2 repair shops with half the profit going to the workers 20 % to the gov and 30% going to the investors
“In 2018, it seemed like half of national consumption of rice could be covered, and all of bean consumption, but harvests of both crops have plummeted…In 2022, rice production was around 100,000 tons (the country needs 700,000) and bean production was 10,000 (we need 100,000).”
See this previous article from Havana times for an an indication of what caused that general collapse in rice production.
https://havanatimes.org/features/vietnamese-abandon-their-successful-rice-project-in-cuba/
You would also think that some enterprising journalist would have sought to interview some of those Vietnamese participants to discover some detailed anecdotal examples about the problems of rice production in Cuba they encountered. But here’s a small snippet from the article:
“With the departure of the Vietnamese we all felt a loss,” laments Diosdado, 68 years old and a resident in the vicinity of the Agro-industrial Company of Granos Sur del Jíbaro. “They arrived 20 years ago but got tired, because this was worse than plowing the sea; it was plowing in a sea of inefficiency.”
The collaboration project began in 2002, and, in addition to providing equipment and machinery to Cuban producers, it kept dozens of Vietnamese specialists and technicians in Cuba. The area of La Sierpe was the main focus of this collaboration, and dikes were built, canals were cleaned and local specialists were trained. But, over the years, the performance of the rice fields failed to meet the expectations of the Vietnamese, who also had to deal with the clumsy state bureaucracy, the lack of a stable supply of fuel and the inefficiency of the Agro-industrial Company.
The final blow to the relationship occurred last year, when the hydrocarbon crisis deepened. “The Vietnamese technicians demanded a quota of fuel to keep working, advising and connecting directly with what was happening in the fields…But the amount they needed almost never arrived, and then they were told that they had to supply it themselves, buy it abroad and bring it to the Island.” In the end, “the Vietnamese did not renew the contract, as they had in previous years, and the technicians left,” an employee of the administrative area of the Agro-industrial Company tells this newspaper. “The Communist Party bosses gathered us at the beginning of this year to tell us that the Vietnamese were leaving, and they warned us not to say anything about it.”
Allow farmers from Ukraine and Holland to get a deal to run and take over 30 percent all the farmland in cuba
Allow them to sell this food and animal feeds at market prices Allow them to work with mexico and Canada and Europe to setup low wage manufacturing jobs that the workers get $2 U S a hr plus $1 U S hr to go for medical care food and education in a large free trade zone
Allow them to bring in new equipment from any country except the U S duty free for food processing storage and transport includes used wind turbines and a used natural gas / coal turbine and replace or rebuild the current nitrogen plant in cuba and sell at fair price inputs to smaller farm co ops under 2000 acres each with the employees getting 40 percent of the profits plus enough food to eat of the co ops
The cuban gov will not do this because control is more important than feeding the children in my opinion. I am much better living in a tent and working in Ontario Canada than a doctor is with a house in cuba
“. . . the Government has decided to opt for “different agricultures,”Perez Brito explained, where large-scale productions with state-led companies should coexist with self-sufficiency projects in municipalities and workplaces, on farms and family backyards.” Drastically different for sure.
The government just stated that large – scale agricultural production is an abject failure. No one in Cuba disputes that fact. So how are family backyard farming and work place farming so called “different agricultures”, to quote Ydael Perez Brito the Minister of Agriculture, suppose to work? How are these different forms of agriculture suppose to feed the majority of hungry Cubans at an affordable price?
Here again is a prime example of totalitarian government bureaucrats who are totally out of touch with Cuban economic reality. Number one, what Cuban family has the time or the inclination to begin planting and growing crops in their backyard to help bail out the incompetent, mismanaged communist government care takers who are over paid and under worked.
The majority of Cubans those lucky enough to have a job are over worked and under paid plus after their arduous day at work must make provision to go to a store, wait in line for hours on end to try and buy something that those totalitarian decision makers obtain at discount prices and never have to wait in sweat soaking line ups.
Are agricultural crops suppose to grow better and faster in a backyard without the necessary resources that the Minister of Agriculture is lamenting about don’t exist in Cuba because of external factors beyond Cuba’s control? How does that happen?
When Cuban government officials, such as the Minister of Agriculture in this case, attend the propaganda laden TV show “Mesa Redonda” they must spew forth, any, and all kinds of nonsense such as – “. . . everyone who can take to the fields . . .”. What? Is that a dictatorial order?
His pronouncement is obviously produced to appease the totalitarian team players and by default put the blame on the ordinary Cuban for not taking and acting seriously on his bizarre agricultural “ideas”. What his pronouncement really elicits in reality is everyone who can take to a boat or an airline ticket to better pastures because these fools in charge are becoming more and more unhinged in their pronouncements as the true economic indicators meet with reality.
In any industrialized country, the majority of the population live in cities and they rely on a few farmers living in the country side on huge farms to seed, grow and provide the population with agricultural sustenance. The Cuban totalitarian state based on its revealed pronouncements wants the reverse.
Because of its sustained incompetence and mismanagement throughout the years, this totalitarian government wants ordinary Cuban families in their backyards and in their workplaces to seed, grow and agriculturally sustain the majority of the population. Can anyone square that circle?
The Cuban totalitarian government seriously needs to begin believing in free market reforms whereby agricultural workers, for one, begin receiving sufficient compensation for their hard work and for the government to begin implementing land reforms whereby a farmer owns, not rents, all the inputs and subsequently all the output the farm produces with borrowed capital at reasonable interest rates. This of course is a total anathema to the current communist rulers.
Back yard beets is what they want.