A rancher from the province of Granma has once again shaken up social media with a video posted on Facebook in which he denounces the absurd logic of the Cuban agricultural system: the State buys milk from him at 38 pesos per liter and resells it to consumers at 25, that is, below what it costs to produce.
“Walking backward, they pay 38 for milk and sell it at 25 a kilo, that’s going backward. The one who invented this economy is walking backward. So, they can never move forward like that. They don’t benefit the people, nor do they benefit us producers,” says Andrés Manuel Sosa Ramírez, a farmer from Yara.
The producer does not just point out the invested price: he also reports that payment can be delayed for almost an entire year.
"We lose double because then they pay us for the milk once a year. How are they going to pay it? If it's 25 kilos at a time for 38 pesos, it takes almost a year to gather the money. That's called an economy going backward," he stated.
It is not the first time that Sosa Ramírez has publicly exposed the abuses he faces. In May 2026, the National Livestock Control Center (CENCOP) imposed a fine of 60,000 pesos on him for an alleged age discrepancy in his animals, a penalty that he described as a tool of "submission" against breeders.
A month later, in June, he received a second fine of 200,000 pesos for having his cattle grazing on idle lands, a penalty that sparked over 13 million views on Facebook and ignited the debate about the regime's agricultural policy.
When the government announced a package of 176 economic measures on June 19, Sosa Ramírez publicly questioned their effectiveness because his fine had not been revoked: “In several of those measures, they devalue the fine that was imposed on me, but they didn't remove it. They left it, I have to pay it. Will these new measures be real?” he asked, offering to sell the State two of his best cows for 100,000 pesos each to settle his debt.
The testimony of this livestock farmer from Yara is far from an isolated anecdote; it reflects a structural crisis that has been destroying the Cuban dairy sector for years.
Cuba has lost more than 900,000 heads of cattle since 2019, and by the end of 2024, the national herd barely reached three million animals, nearly 400,000 fewer than the previous year.
Milk production fell by 37.6% in January 2025 alone, and the country produces less than 200 million liters annually compared to a demand of 500 million.
The unpaid debts are chronic: Acopio de La Habana accumulated nearly 200 million pesos in debts with producers, and in Camagüey, 36% of cattle ranchers did not deliver a single liter of milk in 2025 due to a lack of incentives.
More than 100,000 Cuban children do not receive milk daily, a direct consequence of a system that, as Sosa Ramírez describes, has been regressing for decades.
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