The vice president Salvador Valdés Mesa and the prime minister Manuel Marrero Cruz demanded this Friday to increase food production during a visit to the Santiago de las Vegas Defense Zone, in the Boyeros municipality of Havana.
Valdés Mesa emphasized that the territory, with over 176,400 inhabitants, has the capacity to produce more food, while Marrero requested to identify the resources available in each defense zone to ensure basic services and economic needs, showed a report from the official television.
During the meeting, the energy security of healthcare institutions, the supply of drinking water, and the use of renewable sources in prioritized centers were also evaluated.
Additionally, it was reported on the operation of 12 units of the family care system that use alternatives for cooking.
The visit reflects a recurring dynamic this year. On July 17, both leaders toured the La Güinera Defense Zone in Arroyo Naranjo, where Marrero emphasized the need to cultivate the land and highlighted that this area has available land.
Boyeros was also one of the four municipalities selected in February for the re-launch of the failed Cordón de La Habana, an agricultural project initiated by dictator Fidel Castro (1926-2016) in 1968 that involved about 25,000 daily workers without achieving its production goals.
The new demands arise as Cuba faces a deep agricultural crisis. The country produces about 111,000 tons of rice each year against a demand of 600,000 and relies on imports for between 70% and 80% of the food it consumes, at a cost of nearly 2 billion dollars annually.
According to a report in April from the Food Monitor Program, around 97% of the Cuban population lacked adequate access to food, and nearly one in three households reported that a member had gone to bed hungry. Havana is also among the five provinces with critical levels of food insecurity.
The gap between official directives and the reality in the fields was also revealed in August 2025, when a farmer from Majibacoa, Las Tunas, responded to a Communist Party leader who was trying to instruct him on how to plant: "We are in the furrow and know just as well as you what we need to do."
At the end of 2024, the Communist Party itself acknowledged that "the results we have achieved today do not meet the needs of the population."
Since then, the authorities have increased patrols and called for a boost in production, yet, according to the cited data, there has been no significant recovery.
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