Official media admitted this week the huge drop in state pork production in Cuba and at the same time the gradual increase in its price on the street, in the so-called "black market" or private, in many small and medium-sized enterprises.
According to the official newspaper GranmaIn the last few months, pork and other derivative production on the island has deteriorated to the point that it can almost be classified as extinct or non-existent on the average Cuban's table. At least, the state-run production and the one that would be sold at more affordable prices in state agricultural markets and fairs.
The price of pork meat went from 16 Cuban pesos per pound in a few years, when there was a production stability, to almost a thousand Cuban pesos today, according to various offers in buying and selling groups on social networks like Facebook.
In 2018, Cuba had a record production of 200 thousand tons and even avoided costly imports, supplying the national market and the various hotels in its tourist hubs. But currently, hardly even the hotels.
Without animal feed, there is no paradise with pork in Cuba: prices rise
Last year only occurred just over 9,000 tons of pork meat. They said from the official media, a figure they described as "insignificant and far from the demand and real needs of the country."
This, according to the Communist Party newspaper, directly affects "the high price of that product, which in some places exceeds a thousand pesos per pound." To make matters worse, faced with the question of how to increase it. pig production today, the specialists agreed on something logical: "without feed it is impossible to revive that production."
A local producer, Orelvis Peñate, explained that with tubers and palmiche, two or three pigs can be raised in a house, but without feed, intensive breeding as it was done before cannot exist.
Meanwhile, pig buying and selling groups on the island advertise with offers like these: "Boneless pork leg at $790 per pound and boneless pork loin at $810 per pound."
That not only happens with pork, it's absolutely everything. In Cuba, there are only a couple of old dying men who only have a shave left in this world. And the few young people left are looking for a way out through other means because no one can get ahead by raising pigs.