The long lines to buy potatoes will continue to be the scenes in the neighborhoods of Cuba, after the Ministry of Agriculture recognized this Thursday that the national production of the tuber will not cover the internal demand in 2022 and, in the best of cases, it will be at last year’s levels.
The domestic demand for potatoes from Cuba is approximately 151,668.30 tons, of which 35,272.30 were imported from the Netherlands and Canada.
This bad news comes while deliveries are being made, this week, from 4 pounds per person to 5 pesos a pound in various neighborhoods of Havana.
As explained by specialist Enel Espinosa to the Cuban News Agency (ACN), the estimated harvest for this year is 116,396 tons, amounts “far from national demand.”
56% of the area dedicated to this crop was planted “outside the ideal calendar”, mainly due to lack of inputs”, which will make it difficult to meet the objectives.
If the official projection is achieved, it would be the fourth worst result of the potato harvest since 2000.
According to data from the National Statistics and Information Office (Onei), this objective is similar to the harvest obtained in 2020 (115,385 tons), the last year for which there is a record, and which was the worst since 2017. If the projection is achieved official, it would be the fourth worst result of the potato harvest since 2000.
Espinosa also acknowledges that the tuber harvest will be far from the maximum recorded by Cuban agriculture at the end of the last century and in the first decade of the current one, when it exceeded 300,000 tons, more than double the current forecast.
In 1996, Cuba was even a net exporter, reaching a production record of 348,000 tons. In 2010 its sale was liberalized, but in 2015 the harvest collapsed (123,000 tons) and the Government had to import to cover the demand, which led to rationing it as of 2017.
The information is known at an adverse moment for the Cuban countryside, after negative data on its main crops, such as sugar, tobacco and coffee, were known in recent months.
The country, which imports between 60 and 70% of the food it needs, is also going through a serious economic crisis, due to the pandemic
The country, which imports between 60 and 70% of the food it needs, is also going through a serious economic crisis, due to the pandemic, US economic sanctions and errors in national macroeconomic management.
The crisis is marked by the scarcity of basic goods, the partial dollarization of the economy and a sharp rise in prices.
Since the pandemic began, the situation has worsened even more and the queues to buy potatoes are several hours long, generating riots and disputes to get the pounds of potatoes that the Cuban State allows to acquire, according to rationing and only once since that started the year.
The lines that must be made to buy the tuber cover entire blocks and this year, the Cuban State has only announced the sale of the food once.
In February, the Government doubled the price of potatoes due to the rise in the price of agricultural products and the increase in labor costs per employee. The pound of the tuber went from three to five pesos, and six in the case of refrigerated potatoes.
A resolution published on those dates in the official Gazette, established the new storage and retail price of potatoes harvested with national seed at 9,196.2 cents per ton, equivalent to 423 pesos per quintal. The potato harvested with imported seed stands at 7,152.46 pesos per ton, or 329 pesos per quintal.
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