Havana/The state company Agroind SA has reached an agreement with the Russian Rice Consortium to, they declared, “help Cuba achieve food sovereignty.” The project, presented within the framework of the recent Havana International Fair (Fihav 2025), plans to achieve yields greater than six tons per hectare, with the initial planting of 600 of them in the municipality of La Sierpe, in Sancti Spíritus.
The intention is to extend production up to 10,000 hectares, which represents an efficiency similar to that of Vietnam, Thailand or China. To do this, the consortium of the Eurasian country must provide the necessary inputs.
It is striking, however, that the Russians follow in the footsteps of the Vietnamese on the Island in terms of the production of this grain. Earlier this year, a company from the Asian country became the first entity foreigner to receive land in Cuba – in principle, 308 hectares – to plant rice on a farm in the south of the province of Pinar del Río, an unprecedented experience on the Island since 1959.
An experiment in rice production then emerged with Vietnamese participation in which the Asian side provides the hybrid seed, inputs and technical advice, while the Cuban usufructuary farmers are in charge of planting and harvesting.
With results well above the yields of local producers, they achieved about seven tons per hectare compared to just 1.5 in the rest of the country, demonstrating once again that the State is not capable of promoting self-sufficient national production, and to produce rice (or almost anything) in Cuba, it continues to depend on someone from abroad.
It was not the first time that the Asian country cooperated with Cuba in the production of cereal. He already did it in the same municipality of La Sierpe, in Sancti Spíritus, until 2022when he decided Cancel the project tired of Cuban inefficiency. In 2025 the Vietnamese technicians returned to meet the same problems of bureaucracy and fuel shortages that caused their departure. Probably the same ones the Russians will clash with.
The national production of this cereal barely reached 80,000 tons in 2024, while approximately 700,000 tons of rice are needed per year to supply domestic consumption.
The rest is covered by imports.
The agreement with the Russians on rice joins others announced by the regime with great fanfare, to praise a lackluster fihav. Another of them was the one signed by the Luis Bocourt Coffee Processor, in Bahía Honda, Artemisa, and the Italian firm Caffè Sun, which plans to allocate 20 hectares supposedly to “position Cuban coffee in the international market.”
During the announcement of the pact, it was reported that the Island will provide “soil, climate, seeds and experience in cultivation,” while the Italian side will provide “inputs, technologies, machinery and financing,” to, according to the authorities, promote the production and marketing of coffee. Renato Severini, partner of the Italian firm, said he hopes to achieve “recognition of Cuban coffee on an international level.” But no goals or objectives were reported regarding grain production.
Caffè Sun SRL operates mainly in Italy and distributes in other countries such as the USA, Ukraine, Germany and Spain. Now Cuba joins this map, but following the route that the Government has set in this sector: export, rather than national consumption.
The agreement will not influence Cubans to recover their traditional “buchito”, and even less so that the grain returns to the warehouses or lowers the exorbitant price that it currently reaches in the informal market.
The main reason why it does not reach the population is the production collapsewhich, according to the National Office of Statistics and Information, fell by 51% in the last five years.
This is not the first attempt of its kind. Other previous projects with foreign financing have delivered inputs to producers and with surplus quantities of grain dedicated to self-consumption, packages of 250 and 500 grams, and one kilogram, of coffee have been produced to sell to the population “at affordable prices.”
One of them is MásCafé, an initiative of the Italian Agency for Cooperation and Development that began in 2023. As reported last January by ACN, the initiative is implemented in Santiago de Cuba, Holguín, Guantánamo and Granma and has given producers “essential tools” such as machetes, files, wheelbarrows, bags, chainsaws, tractors and motorcycles for transportation.
Another initiative that same year was BioCuba Café SA. The company emerged as the first joint venture of the Cuban Agroforestry System with the Italian Lavazza Foundation.
Michele Curto, the director of the company, then promised, during the announcement of the agreement, that “for every ton of coffee that goes out, the same amount must be guaranteed for Cubans. Exporting coffee is necessary to increase the production of the grain in the country, and in this way we will be able to have coffee for everyone.”
However, BioCuba Café has not obtained the expected results. “Compliance with the estimate last year was 32%,” said Curto, although he promised to “almost double that figure” by 2025. For now, there is no data in this regard, and coffee is still absent from Cuban tables.
