What will we eat in two or three months? This is probably the question that Cubans on the island are asking themselves the most today .
There is no answer to this question in sight. Nor is there one for others, like how long the blackouts will last, or when Raúl Castro's remains be placed in his mausoleum in the Sierra Cristal?
But, since eating is a sine qua non for living, we must begin by breaking down the causes of the staggering pace at which the crisis in Cuban agriculture is now worsening, and what can happen if it does not stop by liberating the countryside. I will address the energy crisis, and why the health of a single person in Cuba is so absurdly important for an entire people, another time.
The speed at which agricultural production is dropping is unprecedented. . After agonizing over getting something to cook today or tomorrow, Cubans are now looking ahead and wondering what they will be able to eat, and how much, in the near future.
Less and less food is reaching grocery stores
Cuba's socialized countryside has never produced enough food, but now it is producing less than ever, and the Government does not have the funds to import food to at least alleviate hunger, which is rising rapidly.
At neighborhood grocery stores, agromarkets, MSMEs, private restaurants, shopping centers, and even on the indispensable black market, there is less and less food for sale. And when it "appears," it is in very small quantities. For example, the people of Santiago, after six months without receiving a single ounce of rationed chicken, now have begun to receive less than a half of kilogram per capita for the month. This month they could be eating half an ounce a day of chicken, less than at a Nazi concentration camp!
The situation is so serious that recovery will be very difficult, expensive and prolonged. Minister of Agriculture Ydael Pérez Brito revealed figures evidencing the agricultural debacle in the last four years. It was found that even in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic there was more production than now, and that the socialist measures publicized to increase production made everything worse.
Believe it or not, Cuba today produces less than 200,000 tons of food in total. And 700,000 tons of rice alone are needed for consumption by Cubans. In 2023 only 27,900 tons of rice were produced, and 238,000 fewer tons of food was produced, in general.
In contrast, Uruguay, another small country in the region, lists come 3.4 million inhabitants and its territory covers less than twice Cuba's, but it produces food for more than 30 million people.
Fidel's "culture of folly," Communist genes and GAESA
What is the cause of the causes of this disaster? Generally, when analyzing the issue, criticisms focus on the regime's mistakes and its mismanagement of agriculture. That is true, and that the current government team is the ineptest since the declaration of independence, but those errors are an effect and not the cause, or at least not the main one.
The causal matrix is three-fold: 1) the "culture of revolutionary folly" introduced by Fidel Castro; 2) the DNA of socialism; and 3) a military mafia (GAESA) that holds supreme power and runs the economy basically for its own benefit.
The aforementioned "culture" was sown by a narcissistic and know-it-all psychopath who never held anyone accountable for his hair-brained ideas; a man who ruled by slamming his fist on the table to impose his ideas, disconnected from reality, and dismissed those who questioned them, no matter how stupid they were.
This aggravated Communism in Cuba. The "chosen one," Charlatan in Chief, surpassed all his counterparts in the so-called "socialist camp" in terms of the nonsensical ideas he implemented.
We may recall the 10 Million Ton Sugar Harvest (he dismissed the Minister Orlando Borrego, when he confessed that this would not be possible), the sickly F-1 hybrid cows, the Holsteins at air-conditioned dairy farms, the Cordón de La Habana (massive State agricultural project), his bizarre obsession with the Ubre Blanca (White Udder) cow, and the Rosafé Signet stallion bull.
Then there was the deforestation (with the Che Guevara Brigade) of 215,000 hectares of fruit trees, forests, and crops, at a cost of 500 million dollars, to plant rice and pangola grass, which were never sown, and aggravated the droughts on the island; the Dairy Cordon of Havana, the countryside school, the Triangle of Ceba (Camagüey), the Food Plan, the "Zero Option" (which involved training the population to live without water or electricity), the unproductive (and very expensive) "voluntary work" in the countryside... and even the proposal to dry 67,000 swampy hectares of the Ciénaga de Zapata.
No State can be an agricultural monopoly
Worst of all, the last straw, is that today the regime boasts of the "continuity" of those disastrous practices. And now we can add the socialist DNA, very easy to detect with a question: are fatal, absurd mistakes made in the management of agriculture in countries with market economies? No, because it is in private hands and based on an infallible natural law: "the master's watchful eye fattens his cattle."
In no serious country can the State have a monopoly on agriculture and agricultural commerce. Pale-faced bureaucrats who have never planted a sweet potato cannot dictate from refrigerated offices what to sow, how, and how much, to sun-weather men working the fields, nor can they force them to deliver their crops to the State at prices that do not even cover production costs, nor should they imprison successful farmers for "illicit enrichment."
Even in countries where the Communist Party still rules, but agriculture has been liberated, production has soared. Vietnam, with its Doi Moi (capitalist reform) went from massive famines to being the world's third largest exporter of rice and second largest exporter of coffee.
Finally, there is the mafia factor. A single example is revealing: in 2023, the Government allocated over 32.37 billion pesos (over 1.34 billion dollars, at the official 24x1 exchange rate) to the Tourism industry, owned by the mafia (GAESA), and barely invested 2.99 billion pesos (125 million dollars) in agriculture. And in the first half of 2024, with more hunger in Cuba, over 16.32 billion pesos were invested in Tourism, and some 1.05 billion in agriculture - 15 times less!
The head of this mafia is a "general" (who did not earn any of its four stars) and who, with characteristically cold cruelty, refuses to allow agricultural workers to freely produce and trade their crops. He also prohibits Cubans from buying land and investing capital in their own country to make it produce more. He only gives land to foreigners who agree to do business with the GAESA mafia.
As long as the Government meddles in agriculture, "there will never be food in Cuba"
These are the three heads of the dragon that has spawned the agricultural disaster in Cuba, and they must be severed as soon as possible. Without freedom in the countryside, agriculture is doomed.
Cuba's agricultural workers have always said this, and continue to do so. I remember back in 1966, in the Sierra Cristal, dozens of coffee growers told me that if the State continued to intervene in the coffee cultivation and its commercialization, all national production would plummet. And so it was: from 60,000 tons produced in 1960 of an excellent, world-famous coffee, today it produces between 8,000 and 9,000 tons.
Today, 58 years later, this is what Emiliano González, from Bayamo, told the independent press from his El Horno farm: "As long as the government keeps meddling with agricultural workers, and with agriculture, and livestock, and the production of eggs, as long as the black hand of Communism is there, forget it; there will never be food in Cuba."
We must stop the socialist State from strangling agriculture and restore common sense, which means private property, liberating the nation's fields. Cubans should be allowed to invest capital in their own agriculture, which should also be opened up to foreign investment, without ties to a dictatorial mafia.
We must do this, or there will be humanitarian crisis and famine. Perhaps this is the answer to the question of what we are going to eat.