The National Television News (NTV) aired a report this Monday in which it presented the buffalo species as a "promising option to increase deliveries to the meat and dairy industry."
The report highlighted the work of the Bayamo Agricultural Company in the province of Granma, in eastern Cuba, and stated that “the hardiness to the climate and the high productive potential for meat and milk indicate that the buffalo species holds promise for increasing deliveries to the industry.”
According to the official media, buffaloes can reach over 420 kilograms of commercial weight in about 30 months, with a conversion rate of 600 to 650 grams daily. For this reason, the company established a breeding promotion center with a capacity for 25 animals, where the animals coexist for about a year before being distributed to other provinces.
The private producer Daniel Muñoz Valle, from the Anselmo Aldana credit and service cooperative, has been working with buffaloes for just over a month and assured that the growth is significant: "It's a very big difference. I believe that for me, the increase in the calves is almost double what is growing daily. Because, well, I'm seeing it."
The problem is that this story has been told many times before.
Water buffaloes (Bubalus bubalis) arrived in Cuba in the early 1980s as part of official plans to boost meat and milk production. Since then, the state media has periodically presented this species as an alternative capable of transforming national livestock farming.
Every so often, the same story resurfaces. The province, the farm, or the officials interviewed may change, but the message remains unchanged: buffaloes withstand the climate better, produce more milk, gain weight quickly, and represent an opportunity to increase the food supply.
In 2016, official media promoted a farm in Cienfuegos that promised to expand its herd to 4,000 animals and significantly increase the production of milk, meat, mozzarella cheese, and yogurt.
A year later, Cuban Television reported on the accelerated growth of the species and its potential to contribute to the food supply of the population. In 2018, new reports from Ciego de Ávila emphasized that buffaloes could help recover the meat and dairy industry.
The narrative continued in 2025 when Miguel Díaz-Canel visited a livestock unit in Guantánamo and .
Now, in 2026, the National News once again presents buffaloes as a promise to boost deliveries to the industry. Four decades after their introduction in Cuba, the official narrative remains essentially the same.
However, what has changed is the situation of Cuban livestock, which is experiencing its worst crisis in decades.
Cuba has lost more than 900,000 cattle since 2019, and by the end of 2024, the total livestock population was barely around 3 million animals, about 400,000 less than the previous year.
The production of milk fell by 37.6% according to the Statistical Yearbook of Cuba 2023, while in Camagüey —the country's leading dairy province— nearly 59,000 cattle deaths and over 7,000 clandestine killings were recorded just in 2024.
The official data confirms a severe food crisis that extends far beyond meat and milk: egg production has fallen by 43%, root vegetables by 44%, and rice by 59.1%.
In this context, a survey by the Food Monitor Program revealed that one in three Cuban households experienced hunger in 2025, with 33.9% of families reporting that at least one member went to bed hungry, compared to 24.6% the previous year, and 96% of the population lost purchasing power for food.
In response to that situation, the regime reacts with a herd of 3,000 buffalo in a province with more than 800,000 inhabitants, repeating a promise that has gone unfulfilled for over forty years.
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