Authorities have culled between 45,000 and 50,000 chickens in the past 12 days.
14ymedio, Havana, 31 October 2024 — After nearly two weeks of fasting, the chickens of Sancti Spíritus have stopped laying eggs. Production is “at zero,” said Aliesky Guevara Molina, director of the provincial Poultry Company, speaking bluntly on Wednesday, and the feeding system “is severely affected.”
As if that were not enough, the authorities have slaughtered between 45,000 and 50,000 birds in the last 12 days, victims of the “affectation,” the word with which Guevara defines the drop in nutritional intake of the hens and the consequent loss of weight. It is a “considerable” and “strong” number, he said. There are 220,000 hens left in the province, half of them young.
Without food for the birds, which have been subjected to drastic reductions in their diet – in Isla de la Juventud the “diet” was only 50% of the standard – the distribution of eggs has been in crisis for months in the country. Sancti Spíritus has declared itself to be in a “process of recovery,” but has not shown any concrete signs of improvement since last January, the date when the debacle began, according to Guevara.
Sancti Spíritus has declared itself to be in a “recovery process,” but has not given any concrete signs of improvement
The official limited himself to commenting that “the animals are already gaining weight” and it is expected that they will begin to produce. What is specifically lacking is feed, for which the country must buy raw materials from abroad. Without resources, explains the director, they had to resort to “rice-based feed. In March it was just rice, in April it stabilized a bit and at the end of May it became complicated again.” That last month, the hens had to fast for five days.
In June there was some stability, but the following month the supply was suspended again for up to 10 days. “Then it stabilized in August and part of September,” but this month there was a new relapse. Gone are the days when 10 eggs were delivered per month per customer in the bodegas — ration stores — of Sancti Spiritus.
“Initially – before January – eggs were delivered to consumers in Sancti Spíritus and Trinidad, then it was continued last month and they began to be distributed in two more municipalities: Taguasco and part of Fomento, and when we were already recovering, the instability with food began again and deliveries stopped,” says Guevara.
Despite the circumstances, the director promises that at some point eggs will be delivered to “the municipalities that have been missing them since July.” In defense of his office, he assures that the problem is national. “It is not that Sancti Spíritus has done badly,” he says. “It is a balance sheet for the country. There are even many provinces that have not distributed the five (eggs) from July. Social consumption was always protected until the last moment with the same productions, but when it reached zero there was no other option.”
The director promises that at some point eggs will be delivered to “the municipalities that have been missing them since July”
A carton of 30 eggs costs around 3,600 pesos* on the informal market for Cubans who can afford it and who do not want to wait for the State’s promises to be fulfilled through the ration system. Problems with feeding chickens, as well as power outages, which leave them without electricity and water for days, have hampered egg production in Cuba, which fell from five million units per day in 2020 to just 2.2 in 2023.
Faced with this decline, the authorities have been forced to import food on a massive scale, as reflected in the expansion of exports from the Dominican Republic to the Island. Between June 2023 and August 2024 alone, the figure grew by 1,858.4% year-on-year. From July 2023, when this product began to be purchased in the neighboring country, until the end of that year, the expenditure was 1.5 million dollars, while in the eight months so far this year, more than 5.2 million dollars have already been invested.
Eggs have also been imported from Colombia, with a first batch of half a million eggs arriving last March, with the aim of reaching 40 million eggs throughout the year.
The problem will not be solved even if production returns to normal levels. At least that is what Guevara thinks, who washes his hands of the transport crisis and Havana’s mismanagement. The official said he could not guarantee that the well-being of the industry would automatically benefit Cubans. “As we have already explained,” he concluded, “we are not distributors, but producers, and it is the Ministry of Economy that decides what function to give to the eggs.”
*Translator’s note: Confirming current wages and prices in Cuba is difficult, but generally speaking, at this price the average worker would need more than an entire month’s wages to afford 30 eggs.
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