The Pinar del Río Poultry Company (Pican), a state entity that led egg production in Cuba for decades, is seeking to regain ground with a model that hands over its farms and poultry stock to private producers while retaining control over breeders and distribution.
The general director of Pican, Edel Triana Velázquez, acknowledged that the shortage of feed and other supplies has reduced the herd and the volume of eggs, although he assured that the entity remains "a national benchmark," highlighted the official newspaper Guerrillero this Thursday.
"The largest volume of the company's livestock is now in the farms of private producers," the executive stated, in a description that highlights the increasing influence of the private sector in the activities of a state-owned enterprise that aims to regain its former leadership.
The model began with agreements in which Pican provided the birds and the facilities, while the producers took on the responsibility of supplying the feed. Of the eggs produced, 70% went to the producer, and the remaining percentage stayed with the state-owned company.
In a later stage, the animals became the property of the producers. One of the cases mentioned by Guerrillero is that of the tobacco grower Reynel Rojas Medina, who took over the labor collectives of two farms under agreement and rented two markets, Puerto Esperanza and La Mandarina, in the city of Pinar del Río, to sell eggs and other products from his farm.
Triana defended the transfer of the workforce to the private sector as "a means of protecting workers and ensuring they are the first to benefit from the transformation of the sector." According to the executive, salaries tripled for all employees hired by the company.
Pican is also looking for revenue through other means, including leasing facilities, renting transportation, and selling chicken litter, a byproduct that they previously discarded.
The entity has more than 800 workers and 35 units, of which 29 are dedicated to the production of goods and six to services, spread across five municipalities in Pinar del Río and three in Artemisa.
The company also continues to supply eggs to health and educational centers, to the Food Enterprise for the production of quinceañera cakes, and to pregnant women, who have the option to purchase 30 units per month, said the source.
However, the situation at the Carlos Marx farm in San Cristóbal presents a different picture of the challenges facing the sector. Its 18 workers have been without poultry for a long time, despite poultry production being the primary focus of the unit. Instead, they take care of breeding rams and more than 6,000 banana plants that are now ready for harvest.
In 2025, production in Pinar del Río barely reached 24% of the levels of 2019, and only 46% of the facilities had been restored with animals.
Cuba went from producing between four and five million eggs daily to just 1.2 million, as acknowledged by the Minister of Agriculture, Ydael Pérez Brito, in October 2024.
Total production plummeted from 2.717 billion units in 1991 to 385 million in 2024, and over 1.3 million laying hens died that year due to a lack of feed.
In the informal market, eggs reached a price of between 135 and 300 pesos each in various provinces, with cartons of 30 units exceeding the minimum pension of a retiree, which is set at 4,000 pesos.
The national production goal for 2026 is 690.7 million eggs, a figure that represents less than a quarter of what was produced in 1991, demonstrating that recovery, if it occurs, will be slow and partial.
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