Madrid/Alfredo Pérez, a veguero of the best tobacco zone in Cuba, San Juan and Martínez (Pinar del Río), has watered the party to Granmathat last Saturday celebrated the good march of the product. The Ministry of Agriculture reported in the Diario of the Communist Party of the Success of the 2024-2025 campaign and argued that the houses of cure losses have been recovered by the passage of Hurricane Ian in 2022, as well as the tobacco production, with six million cigars for export.
“It is a pity that the end of this 24/25 tobacco harvest is being, for most peasants, a dead end in which we were gradually entering,” says Pérez, which recounts the catastrophes chain that looms over farmers as a direct consequence of the refusal of tobacuba to update the prices that tobacco acquires.
The veguero remembers that The cyclone It destroyed most of the tobacco infrastructure, 90% of the houses of cure. The sources are official, just one week ago that Michel Alejandro Valdés Rabel The country that “in San Juan and Martínez, of the 1,765 houses of cure that there was then, they were standing 22”. The official also chest from the recovery, at least 1,300. What did not explain is that the guajiros had to pay the investment at a good price, believing that the sale of the product would serve to square the accounts. Nothing farther from reality, says Pérez.
“Already in the prices of these new constructions we notice the obvious increase in the value of the materials”
“Already in the prices of these new constructions we notice the obvious increase in the value of the materials, in addition to adding cost in currency, more than new investments are more than double those built before 2022, but keeping the sale price of our tobacco, which seemed illogical and very dangerous,” he says. However, they received false promises that kept them resisting. They were given a postponement of the two -year payment that they considered more than enough for the increase in prices to give them enough profit to face the debts and the following campaign.
“But reality has been different. Today, Tabacuba refuses to update the cost sheet in our favor, leaving us completely vulnerable, since we have no money because we invest in the harvest. Nor the tobacco, because we have collected it (delivered to Cubatabaco). We only have debts, some of production and other investments,” he laments. The Veguero points out that, if they could not be paid better, at least the price of materials and supplies should have been encountered.
On the contrary, a fertilizer sack that cost 200 pesos in 2022 has risen to 1,600 today, but tobacco’s sales prices are completely paralyzed. “An ended tobacco house room cost around 30,000 pesos, today it goes from 100,000. The cost of production for a sunbacco quintal, which was calculated over 4,000, today exceeds 10,000 pesos, clearly generating losses,” he calculates.
So far, he argues, they have maintained silence and calm, because at least they benefited from the amount in freely convertible currency (MLC) that were paid as a stimulus and whose exchange rate was very beneficial, being “the only incentive for the peasants, so we mounted the economy on the informal value of the MLC.
“Investment and purchase levels of supplies and equipment by Tabacuba show clear economic solvency”
Since 2023, the MLC, created four years earlier to parity with the official rate of the dollar, experienced a very strong rise in the informal currency market. In January of that year it was equivalent to 155 pesos, but despite some slight fall, the flight began to lift until in May 2024 it played a roof: it was then changed to 310 pesos. In January 2025, after a pronounced fall until 240 – previsibly for the dollarization announcements made by the Prime Minister, Manuel Marrero, in the National Assembly that made his disappearance assume -, the Cuban virtual currency traced in February until in March it was around 260 pesos, but the collapse since then has been brutal, arriving this Monday at 210.
Given the magnitude of the problem, Pérez has published in his Facebook profile a battery of ideas for the authorities, and considers that they should be taken into consideration immediately. The first one, the update of the national currency file so that a “stimulus” benefit margin is obtained. Payment should have, he considers, immediate effect already on the finished campaign giving farmers “the opportunity to update our economy to be able to honor our debts, our commitments to workers and have strength to begin the next bell.”
Pérez states that tobacco is a good with safe market and a much greater demand than production, so no one should resist favoring it. “In addition,” he adds, “the levels of investments and purchases of supplies and equipment by Tabacuba show clear economic solvency,” he recalls.
At the end of February, during the Habano Festivalthe company Habanos SA (mixed company formed equally by Cubatabaco and the Spanish Altadis) celebrated having achieved a revenue record of 827 million dollars – 106 million more than a year earlier – that is, 14.7% more. At that time, many Guajiros regretted that the money went to the state coffers, but the peasants did not obtain performance. “We have always been an advanced and protected sector compared to the others of agriculture and the country in general,” says Pérez, and concludes: “Today, we are clearly braking, because we do not have the possibility to market it freely, which would be fair, or achieve a good business within the Tabacuba group.”
