AGRICULTURE-CUBA: Prolonged Drought, Gaunt Cattle

By Patricia Grogg Reprint | | Print |

Patricia Grogg

HAVANA, Jun 21 2004 (IPS) - ”Nobody remembers anything like this,” Florencio Ortiz, who lives in the eastern Cuban province of Camagüey, 670 km east of Havana, told IPS by telephone.

”The cows are scrawny, they’re not producing milk, and we have nothing to feed them,” said the farmer, who added that in his 70 years of life, he has never seen the country’s livestock in such an alarming situation.

Not even springtime, the rainiest season in Cuba, eased the impact of the drought – which began in early 2003 – on the country’s cattle, many of which have died of thirst and starvation. The rest are gaunt, having dropped in weight an average of 53 kgs each.

Camagüey and the neighbouring provinces of Holguín and Las Tunas have been hit hardest by the drought, Vice-President Carlos Lage said last week during a tour of the eastern part of the island.

Lage said that construction of a 53-km pipeline to pipe water to Holguín should be completed in August, and similar, but smaller, project are planned in the other two provinces.

The eastern provinces severely affected by the prolonged drought are home to two million of Cuba’s 11.2 million people. Camagüey, historically Cuba’s leading agricultural province, has reported the loss of around 100 head of cattle a day in the past few months due to the shortage of forage and water.

Last year, Cuba produced 123,000 tons of beef – a huge plunge from the 400,000 tons produced in 1990. And the dairy industry received only 219 million litres of fresh milk, eight percent lower than the projected total, and just one-third of the pre-1990 annual average.

Agriculture and cattle-breeding in particular are in a difficult situation due to the condition of the livestock, the lack of balanced fodder, the loss of forage, and the drop in production in the past years, according to a paper by Santiago Rodríguez Castellón, a researcher with the Centre of Studies on the Cuban Economy.

There were 4.1 million head of cattle in Cuba in 2000, according to the government’s statistical yearbook. Small farmers, including those who are grouped in cooperatives, own 51 percent of the country’s cattle and produce 39 percent of the milk.

Experts say it is still early to project the performance of the stockbreeding sector in eastern Cuba for 2004. But they add that there will likely be less cattle than in 2003, when the national herd grew three percent – an increase of 20,100 head – with respect to 2002.

Between January and April this year, the number of cattle in Camagüey shrank by 5,700 animals, which fell victim to thirst and starvation or had to be slaughtered because of the drought.

The heaviest impact of the lack of rain has been felt across southeastern Cuba, where some 3,400 sources of water on which livestock depend have dried up since early 2003. And while May is normally a month of abundant rainfall in Cuba, this year’s month of May was the driest in 43 years.

The crisis in the livestock sector has been reflected in the diets of Cubans, despite the fact that Cuban families consume little beef even at the best of times.

Cubans consumed an annual average of 27.5 kgs of beef per capita up to 1989, partly thanks to the 400,000 tons a year of canned beef and other beef preserves sent by the former Soviet Union as part of its support for this socialist island nation.

The quotas of beef that the government distributes at subsidised prices to Cuban families have been replaced by a protein mixture made up of 70 percent soybeans and 30 percent meat products.

Beef sells on Cuba’s black market for 50 pesos – nearly two dollars in the government exchange houses – for a half kg.

The meat is transported and sold furtively, because cattle-rustling is punishable by more than 10 years in prison.

The high price of beef in the government chain of stores that sell only in dollars puts the product out of the reach of Cubans who have no source of income in dollars. (An estimated 60 percent of Cubans receive that hard currency in the form of family remittances from abroad or through activities in the tourism industry or other means).

Powdered milk can be purchased for a dollar per half kg on the black market. That means Cubans earning the average government sector salary of 260 pesos a month would be able to buy just five kgs of powdered milk if they spent their entire income on the product.

The government makes one litre of milk a day at subsidised prices available for every child under seven, as well as soy-based yoghurt for children between the ages of seven and 14.

In addition, patients with chronic conditions receive quotas of powdered milk, and the elderly (over 65) receive allotments of a product that is a mix of soy, corn flour and powdered milk.

The Cuban state allocates around 60 million dollars a year to guarantee such products for children, the ill and the elderly, and to provide sources of protein in meals served in health and educational institutions, including childcare centres. Cuba imports some one billion dollars a year in foodstuffs.

Farmers are now seeking alternatives for feeding their livestock. The problem, however, is a longstanding one, as Cuba depended heavily on the 600,000 tons a year of raw materials for livestock feed that were supplied by the former Soviet Union before its collapse, which triggered a more than decade-long economic crisis here.

The state agriculture and sugar industries are now working together to help cover the need for cattle fodder, which now includes sugar cane residue and other agricultural waste products, while the manure is used as fertiliser.

Experts say the shortage of water has been one of the weakpoints of the national stockbreeding industry for years, because the land that receives the most rainfall is dedicated to the production of fruit and vegetables, while livestock is raised on the most arid and depleted soils.

Cuba’s grasslands are of low quality and provide insufficient nutrients, nor do the conditions exist to plant soy to replace imports. In the countryside, fodder often contains a mix of the stumps of banana plants, hay and native bushes.