How does a state annihilate the pig production of a country? five Cubans explain it

A report in the official press of Cuba recognized the collapse of swine production on the island, while pork reaches astronomical prices. Cubans interviewed by Martí News point to the State as the only guilty that this essential food in the diet of the Cubans is increasingly absent at the table.

«In recent years, swine production in Cuba has deteriorated significantly,» acknowledges the newspaper Granma citing a «productive record of about 200 thousand tons», in 2018, which resulted in just 9 thousand tons in 2024.

The price of pound of pork in that period amounted to 16 pesos to 1000 pesos.

«The dependence on the importation of raw materials, such as corn and soybeans, has been an insurmountable obstacle in the current context, which has influenced the decrease in swine mass to critical levels,» says the official report.

However, Cubans interviewed by Martí News suggest that it is the State solely responsible for this critical situation.

In recent years, several of the most important and successful private producers of swine meat in the country have been brought to judicial processes under accusations of bribery and enrichment, in addition to suffering harassment and confiscation of goods.

In the past Radio Martí has ​​published complaints of pork producers who have been discouraged by centralism, rapted price policies and the lack of food for animal consumption.

They never paid …

Guillermo del Sol, an independent journalist who lives in the city of Santa Clara, was one of these pork breeders who lost everything.

«I was a victim of all the situations of the Cuban Swine Company, like many people I know, great producers to whom their business, their pigs, their factories, even here are people who manufactured themselves a percent of the feed, who sow sorghum, sowed soybeans, because the Cuban is very entrepreneur They had never paid them, I am not talking about two bags or three bags of feed, I am talking about tons and tons of feed that they never paid us and that we were never answered, and that making a complaint, making a claim is for pleasure, because they always remain without place, «he explained.

The only one that can have resources is the state …

From the agricultural area of ​​Arroyo Blanco, in Jatibonico, Sancti Spíritus, Vladimir Ríos Cruz said that harassment to private producers was what caused this crisis.

«The problem is that when people who had their pigs and their things, began to make their productions and you already start having a level of resources, they do not want anyone to have resources. Here the only one that can have resources is the government, the state, the state, here more nobody can have resources. I immediately invented the law, they invented the trap, then they stripped all the people of this,» Ríos Cruz recalled.

Harassment to producers

In Pinos Island no longer raised pigs, confirmed from Nueva Gerona, Martha Pérez: «Here on the island were places where pigs were raised and they really went up to all those people, destroyed all that and today they are not raising any pig.»

«One as an entrepreneur can have nothing because it really is harassment about all the things you have,» recalled the activist.

Deglation of production

The farmer Emiliano González from Bayamo, in Granma, said that something similar happened with the producers of pig meat in the area.

«They seized him part of the food, they seized him part of the animals, there is no food for pigs and that is why we are in the situation that pork practically in some parts of the country is in a thousand pesos the pound,» said the peasant.

From the city of Guantanamo Miguel Ángel López Herrera said that he is among the group of Cubans for whom the pork is something unattainable. «Money does not give me to buy pork, here most people stop eating pork.»