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The Institute of Tropical Root Crop Research (Inivit), based in Santo Domingo, Villa Clara, announced that it is working on the creation of the first Cuban book on sweet potato production, titled "The Sweet Potato System (camote or batata). The 20 Scientific Laws for Maximum Yield in the Tropics," while Cubans struggle to find this tuber and almost any others in the country’s agricultural markets.
Alfredo Morales Rodríguez, deputy director of Inivit, declared to the Cuban News Agency this Friday that the work will synthesize more than fifty years of scientific research and the lessons learned from the Cuba-China collaboration, which has been active for 24 years and has allowed the introduction of over 500 germplasms of tuber varieties resistant to the Cuban climate.
"It is not just a theoretical book, but rather a tool for transformation aimed at raising the national average yield well above the 11 tons per hectare currently, bringing us closer to the actual potential of the crop," stated Morales Rodríguez.
The executive assured that the impact of the publication "will not be measured in academic citations, but in the productivity of the fields and the economy of the producers, which in turn will influence the tables of Cubans."
The actual productivity and sustained presence of sweet potato or other tubers on the plates of Cubans is something that has not been clearly visible for decades, despite years of scientific experience, hundreds of germplasms, and countless plans for the national economy.
The announcement of the book in question comes at the worst possible time to illustrate the gap between institutional discourse and reality: the production of root vegetables in Cuba fell by 44% in 2023 compared to 2022, according to official data from the National Office of Statistics and Information, and the trend has continued in subsequent years.
The pattern of failed agricultural plans is systematic and well-documented. The Communist Party of Cuba itself admitted in December 2024 that "the results do not meet the needs of the population," and the Minister of Agriculture, Ydael Pérez Brito, confirmed in May 2025 that agricultural production continues to fall short of citizens' needs.
The crisis is not limited to sweet potatoes. In 2023, the production of pork plummeted by 93.2%, rice by 59.1%, milk by 37.6%, and beans by 29.5%. Cuba imports between 70% and 80% of its food, a dependency that is becoming increasingly unsustainable. A report from the Food Monitor Program published this month documented critical levels of food insecurity in five provinces: Havana, Matanzas, Cienfuegos, Guantánamo, and Santiago de Cuba.
The energy crisis exacerbates the situation: blackouts lasting more than 20 hours daily hinder the refrigeration and proper distribution of the few available food items. In Las Tunas, the 2024-2025 sugar harvest only reached 16% of the plan, with 46,400 idle hectares. The government eliminated the monopoly of the state enterprise Acopio in December 2025, which had accrued debts of tens of millions of pesos with farmers, implicitly recognizing the failure of the centralized marketing model.
The Cuban Minister of Economy warned that the production figures achieved "do not meet the demands of the population and are insufficient to cover food deficits," with a decrease of 53% in primary activities at the end of 2024 compared to 2019.
In that context, the publication of a book on how to produce more sweet potatoes—while Cubans are struggling to find root vegetables in the markets—precisely illustrates the disconnection between the scientific-institutional apparatus of the regime and the empty table of millions of families on the Island.
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