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The Cuban government announced on Thursday the formal end of Acopio's monopoly in agricultural marketing, but it maintains extensive state control mechanisms over prices, destinations, and operations in a sector marked by a sharp decline in production.
The Official Gazette published yesterday Decree 143 "On the commercialization of agricultural and forestry products," which formally breaks the exclusive monopoly held by the state-owned company Acopio and authorizes private, state, and mixed small and medium enterprises (mipymes), cooperatives, self-employed workers, and individual producers to participate in the wholesale and retail trade of agricultural products.
The regulation, signed on December 30, 2025, by Prime Minister Manuel Marrero Cruz, repeals Decree 35 of 2021 and Decree 71 of 2022, and is supplemented by Resolution 16/2026 from the Ministry of Agriculture, which establishes the implementation regulation.
However, the State does not abandon the sector. Article 4.1.d of the decree enshrines as a principle the "regulation and control of the State regarding the production, contracting, establishment of priorities for the allocation of agricultural and forestry products, the balances of these products, their prices, quality, and safety in marketing."
In addition, all natural and legal persons engaged in the trade of agricultural products are required to operate with tax bank accounts and to carry out all their collections and payments through them.
Micro, small, and medium enterprises, non-agricultural cooperatives, and self-employed workers may only engage in activities that are expressly approved by the competent authority, as stated in Article 4.3 of the regulation.
Provincial governors and the Municipal Administrative Councils will manage the balances of agricultural and forestry products, while the Ministry of Economy and Planning will coordinate them at the national level.
The decree comes amid a documented productive collapse reflected in the official figures: production drops of 44% in root vegetables, 43% in eggs, and 37.6% in milk, according to government data released in January 2025.
The Acopio system, established in 1962 and solidified as an absolute monopoly during the Revolutionary Offensive of 1968, incurred millions in debt with farmers.
One example of this is that in Havana alone, it owed nearly 200 million pesos to producers, and the state-run Río Zaza in Sancti Spíritus accumulated over 150 million pesos in debts with its suppliers, which paralyzed dairy production.
Recently, the official newspaper Girón described the mechanism that suffocates the producer. "Lower payments lead to reduced purchasing power for supplies. Without the ability to buy feed, livestock milk production decreases. When fertilizers can't be purchased, the land is no longer able to be sprayed or plowed on time. Unable to pay laborers results in lost harvests. Non-payment leads to low productivity that is then criticized", it illustrated.
The Decree 143 is the latest link in a chain of reforms that have not reversed the crisis. The Decree 35 of 2021 already attempted to update agricultural marketing, the 63 measures from May of that year sought to energize the sector, and the Law 148 of Food Sovereignty from 2022 established the general framework, yet none of them achieved visible results in production.
The Vice President Salvador Valdés Mesa acknowledged on March 27 that inflation can only be tackled by supplying the market, but he admitted that "we cannot achieve that in the short term".
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