Telce González gives no date for improving food availability in Cuba

Cuba’s deputy agriculture minister, Telce González, said he cannot specify when food availability in the country will improve noticeably. During a television appearance, he declined to set a timeline for recovery and said offering an exact figure would be “very irresponsible.” His statement came during a recent edition of Cuadrando la Caja, where he appeared alongside a director of an agro-industrial company.

González addressed the issue as authorities promote measures to revive agricultural production. Those actions, however, still do not make it possible to determine when they might result in a greater food supply, according to the remarks. The absence of a specific date leaves people awaiting an improvement without a defined time reference, and the official provided no alternative schedule or indication of when results could be evaluated.

Rice production figures show the scale of one of the sector’s declines: national output fell from 304,000 tons in 2018 to 79,000 in 2025. The difference is 225,000 fewer tons, a decline of nearly three quarters from the earlier figure. Those numbers describe a sharp drop in that crop, but they do not by themselves provide a date for recovery or establish when overall food availability will change.

Cuba imports about 80% of the food it consumes and spends more than $2 billion a year on those purchases, according to figures published with the information about the agricultural situation. Dependence on imports and the recorded decline in rice help show the challenge González discussed without turning those indicators into a forecast. The deputy minister made no commitment on a timeline for improvement and tied that caution to the inability to provide an exact estimate.