A Cuban identified as Lisi published a video on Facebook in which she explains how she substitutes rice with plantain to feed her family, including her young son, because the price of the grain has become unsustainable.
“Right now, with prices through the roof, including rice, which costs you at least 250 pesos per pound and is something consumed daily, just calculate how much you spend on rice alone in a month,” says Lisi in the video.
Faced with this reality, the woman turns to fufú made from plantains, root vegetables, and cornmeal to solve lunchtime: "When we can't afford to buy rice, we have to rely on our friend the plantain. Lunchtime is easy, just a fufú, some root veggies, a bit of cornmeal, and that way we solve the food problem."
Lisi acknowledges that not all children accept that substitute: "Thank God, my child, in this case, does eat the fufu. There are children who won't eat it."
The testimony reflects a crisis that goes far beyond a household. In June 2026, the price of rice in the informal Cuban market exceeds 400 CUP per pound, in contrast to an average state salary of only 7,000 CUP a month and a basic basket estimated at 50,000 CUP.
The government attempted to curb the escalation in March 2025 by imposing an official cap of 155 CUP per pound, but the market completely ignored it.
Cuba needs about 700,000 tons of rice per year and produces less than 15% of that amount, relying almost entirely on imports that the government cannot regularly afford due to a shortage of foreign currency.
In 2023, the country imported 484,222 tons out of a total available of 511,584. China committed to sending 90,000 tons by 2026, of which only 15,000 arrived in May, failing to address the structural deficit.
The strategy of replacing rice with plantains, cassava, sweet potatoes, and other root vegetables has become a daily practice. A report from this month documented how Cubans prepare purées of root vegetables as a substitute for the staple grain.
The testimonies of Cuban mothers unable to feed their children have multiplied on social media. In May, the heart-wrenching cry of a Cuban mother about the lack of food for her children also went viral.
International organizations' figures confirm the scale of the emergency: the Food Monitor Program reported that 96.91% of the Cuban population lacks adequate access to food, and 33.9% of households had a member who went to bed without dinner in the previous 30 days.
UNICEF warned in November 2025 that one in ten Cuban children suffers from severe food poverty, and the World Food Programme stated that 48.5% of students aged six to eleven do not receive any food or snacks at school.
Eighty percent of Cubans believe that the current crisis is worse than the Special Period of the 90s. "Cuban mothers, we Cubans, have to find strategies to ensure that our food supply isn’t affected, especially when we have children or the elderly," Lisi summarized at the end of her video.
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