Our Potato Who Art in Heaven

Our Potato Who Art in Heaven / Orlando Freire Santana

Posted on April 1, 2014



HAVANA, Cuba — Prices of agricultural products have increased between 15

and 25 percent in recent months. An unsustainable burden if we take into

account the population's salaries. The price increase coincides with new

forms of marketing. It turns out that the mechanism for bringing

producers and consumers closer and eliminating intermediaries set off

prices.



It was obvious: An official research center decides to cast aside

marketing analysis and concentrates on production.



Armando Nova Gonzalez, researcher for the Cuban Economic Studies Center,

told the Tribuna de la Havana newspaper: The levels of production should

have increased with the transfer of idle lands to lease-holders. But it

has not been so because of how expensively the State sells tools and

adequate inputs to the lease-holders in order to make the land produce,

among other reasons.



Other forms of production — the Agricultural Production Cooperatives

(CPA) and the Credit and Services Coooperatives (CSS) — also have seen

their costs affected by the high prices that they pay for fuel,

fertilizer, tires and parts for trucks and tractors. All those provided

by a single supplier — a certain state enterprise — which does not offer

options to the producers.



Nova concludes that those costs will not diminish — nor the retail

prices — as long as there exists no market for inputs, where the

producer may select what he needs, with the only limit being his ability

to buy, through credits or personal savings.



In order to verify the prices, we decided to visit three farmers markets

in the capital, each one with a different way of marketing. The Egido

Market, of the offer-demand mode, exhibited the following prices (all

per pound of product): black beans at 10 pesos, red beans at 15, yams at

2, tomato salad at 5, cucumbers at 4, malanga at 5 and chunky bananasat

10 pesos a bunch.



A point of sale in Calzada de Monte, leased to the CCS Juan Bruno Zayas,

offered these prices: black beans at 12, red beans at 13, yams at 2,

tomato salad at 7, cucumbers at 4, malanga at 5 and chunky bananasat 10

pesos a bunch.



In Arroyo, a non-agricultural cooperative, the black beans were at 12,

there were no red, yams at 2, tomato salad at 5, there were no

cucumbers, malanga at 4, and there were no chunky bananaseither. It is

clear, there are no significant variations in the prices among the

different forms of marketing. Nova is right, the elevated costs of

production determine the high sale prices to the public. But, his

suggestion of an inputs market for the growers could meet the same fate

as the wholesale market for the self-employed workers. . . And the price

of the potato will continue toward the heavens.



Cubanet, March 24, 2014, Orlando Freire Santana



Translated by mlk



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