Imported foods, more expensive and better, have displaced domestic products, which are increasingly scarce
14ymedio, Havana, Natalia López Moya, December 30, 2025 –If there was one thing Cubans learned in 2025, it was to read agricultural markets the way one checks the weather report: not to know whether it will rain tomorrow, but to calculate how much food might make it into the house before money evaporates. It was a year without respite for prices, and with a novelty that has ceased to be anecdotal and become part of the landscape: the definitive consecration of imported products in sectors that, until recently, were domestically produced.
Rice, pork, citrus fruits, onions, garlic, and even sugar finished the year having changed their accent. They went from homegrown to speaking English, Portuguese, or peninsular Spanish. The United States, Mexico, Panama, Brazil, and Spain made their way onto the Cuban table not out of gastronomic preference but from sheer necessity. Domestic products became scarce, irregular, or unviable, and the market responded with the logic it knows best: bring goods from abroad to take advantage of a desperate demand for food.
One product that sums up the year was rice, that household thermometer that determines whether there is lunch or only a single meal at night. At the Plaza Boulevard market in Sancti Spíritus, a pound of domestic rice started January at 150 pesos. By July it had reached 280 and, after a slight “breather” forced by state intervention attempting to regulate its price, December found it at 250 pesos. The price did not go down due to a production miracle, but because many private vendors chose to hide it or replace it with imported rice, conveniently outside any regulation. The result was simple: less domestic rice in sight and more sacks with foreign labels.
A pound of domestic rice started January at 150 pesos. By July it had already reached 280
That dynamic repeated itself over and over. Price caps, announced with the tone of a final order, ran into three hard-to-breach walls: the constant devaluation of the Cuban peso, unmet demand, and the obstinacy of merchants, who know full well that selling below costs is not altruism, but ruin. Faced with the choice of losing money or pleasing the authorities, many chose a third path: pulling their merchandise and selling it on the side, where there are no inspectors or ministerial resolutions.
Black beans, another staple of the national plate, offer a similar lesson. At the La Feria de Los Chinos market in Holguín, they began the year at 400 pesos per pound. In August, supply briefly improved and the price fell to 320. But the relief was short-lived. December brought it back to 420 pesos, confirming that in Cuba discounts are usually a parenthesis, not a trend. Imported beans, meanwhile, entered without asking permission from price caps and found their niche among those who prefer to pay more rather than never eat them.
Pork, historically the queen of the Cuban table, definitively lost its crown in 2025. In the Youth Labor Army markets in Havana, managed by the Armed Forces but with most stalls run by private vendors, imported pork loin began the year at 900 pesos per pound. By July it was already at 1,000 and closed December at 1,200. Domestic pork, battered by the lack of feed, theft, and the impossible costs of raising pigs, became a rarity. When it did appear, it did not always respect official prices, and when it did, it disappeared the next day.
Pork, historically the queen of the Cuban table, definitively lost its crown in 2025
Something similar happened with products that define daily cooking. Onions, for example, behaved like a financial asset. At the market at 19th and B, ironically known as La Boutique, in Havana, a pound began January at 350 pesos. By July it was already at 500, and December found it at 600. The smell did not change, but the origin did: increasingly imported onions, better presented, more attractive, and, above all, free of price caps.
A carton of 30 eggs, many households’ protein lifeline, also jumped. In private shops in Holguín it went from 3,000 pesos at the beginning of the year to 3,200 in December. It is not a spectacular increase, but it is persistent, and it adds to a context in which the average salary does not go up, pensions shrink, and any increase, however small, ends up hurting.
The reappearance of mandarins in private markets this year has been scandalous, not so much for their flavor, always pleasant and fragrant, but for their price: around 1,300 pesos per pound, equivalent to nearly half of an average monthly pension on the Island. The citrus fruit arrived from Peru after years of absence and provoked a mix of amazement, nostalgia, and disenchantment. Many Cubans, especially older ones, confessed it had been more than five years since they had seen mandarins for sale.
The scene became iconic: alongside U.S. onions and Panamanian garlic, imported mandarins are sold at central points in Havana with labels recalling their origin, attracting those who see them as a piece of lost flavor. Yet the price turns them into a painful paradox: what should be a return to freshness ends up being an almost unattainable luxury for many pockets.
Alongside U.S. onions and Panamanian garlic, imported mandarins are sold at central points in Havana.
Behind these figures lies a clear logic. The policy of price caps, applied selectively, ended up incentivizing precisely the opposite of what it intended. By regulating domestic rice and leaving imported rice untouched, a clear message was sent to the market: bring in what is not regulated. The result was an accelerated shift toward imported products, more expensive but available.
With bitter irony, many consumers learned to distinguish foreign brands without ever having left the country. Not out of cosmopolitanism, but because Spanish onions, U.S. rice, and Brazilian pork were, paradoxically, more stable than their national equivalents. In 2025, Cuba’s agricultural market did not just sell food: it sold a daily lesson in basic economics. And most people forcibly approved it.
Translated by Regina Anavy
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