FMP concludes that the price of the basic basket “is unattainable for most Cuban families.”
Miami, United States. – A New study of the Food Program Independent Observatory (FMP) It warns of greater food precariousness in Cuba and places a minimally healthy diet out of the reach of most homes. According to FMP, “two adults living in Havana would need at least 41,735 pesos to cover a barely sufficient diet. This figure is equivalent to almost 20 minimum wages or two years of minimum pensions according to official revenues in the country.”
The report – focused on The basic food basket (CBA)– He concludes that the price of that basket “is unattainable for most Cuban families”, even when diet design sacrificed variety and nutritional quality. FMP points out that, to reduce the CBA, “processed and less nutritious foods were prioritized (minced and sausage due to beef or fish), the variety of fresh foods were reduced (eg two fruits per station) and the necessary service costs for cooking, practically irrelevant for its national collapse” were not contemplated.
The observatory explains that for six months he monitored 29 products from eight food groups in state and private networks. The basket was conceived for two adults, young and healthy, depending on the availability and prices of the most consumed foods in Havana and Cienfuegos. The objective was to “complete the basic requirements” with the products effectively accessible in those markets, according to FMP.
Capacity to pay and indebted households
FMP connects the resulting prices with its “2024 food security survey”, whose data account for the mismatch between formal income and food spending: “More than 80% of households allocated for their diet more than their formal income allowed them. Only 25% reached to pay more than 10,000 pesos per month. 70% of households had one or two formal income, no more”.
Consequently, the Observatory maintains, “the vast majority of Cuban households do not have how to ensure a minimally healthy diet, and survives with a highly repetitive diet, scarce in fiber, poor in micronutrients and dependent on ultraprocess foods.” FMP also warns that “continued sub -hender maintains hunger hunger in the population, impacting physical and cognitive development, as well as exposure to departmental diseases.”
The note underlines the role of the basic food basket as a technical input to set minimum wages, poverty lines and social protection policies. However, in the Cuban case, FMP appreciates a rupture of that logic: “In Cuba, this logic is completely broken. In the Cuban context, consumption does not reflect choice, but lack; it is not structured based on cultural habits or nutritional criteria, but of what the State allows or the market imposes.”
From that diagnosis, the Observatory proposes to rethink the usual approach of the CBA: “the need to rethink the concept of basic basket not only as a technical calculation, but as an ethical and political tool, as an indicator of social emergency.” In its assessment, “in Cuba, where the State has de facto de facto food responsibility for the informal market and the individual effort, access to a basic diet is not guaranteed either by income or public policy.”
FMP closes its statement with a call to make visible the structural conditions that condition food in the country’s homes and recognize it as a right. The Observatory “advocates the visibility of the precarious structural conditions faced by Cuban households in terms of food, as well as for the achievement of the right to adequate and healthy food for all Cubans.”
