When truckloads of potatoes reach the Cuban markets, people go immediately to buy their monthly quota, sold at subsidized prices by the government. Few people are aware that the potato crop is one of the most badly impacted by the US blockade against Cuba.

Before 1959, Cuban farmers imported their potato seed from the US. Later, facing the impossibility of buying it in that nearby market they had to find suppliers in Holland and Canada.

Just taking into consideration the 2004 crop, importing the potato seeds from farther away implied an increase in shipping costs of 986,000 US dollars. Cuban farmers have also been deprived of buying US potato seed characterized by their high yields.

Potatoes are a crop of temperate climates, and that implies a lot of expenses in order to attenuate the effects of tropical conditions, which include the constant use of irrigation, fertilizers and pesticides.

The potato crop is the most expensive of the Cuban staples regarding expenses in foreign currency .

Each year, the nation has to spend forty million US dollars to buy the seed, fertilizers, fuel and other supplies.

With a high yield crop, some 350,000 tons of potatoes is produced. That amount of potatoes translates into the fact that each pound costs O.175 US dollars, and that doesn't include local expenses including labor.

Despite this fact, the price at which the pound of potatoes is sold to the population is set at 40 cents of a Cuban peso, the equivalent of a tenth of the cost of the imported inputs.

According to Cuban deputy minister of agriculture, Alcides Labrada, staple crops and cattle raising are the two areas that are worst affected by the US blockade. He added that due to the introduction of the Thrips Palmi bug in potato plantations, yet another chapter in the biological war against Cuba, required that the technology of the crop had to be changed from a mechanized to a manual approach. This because the seed must be protected against that insect by means of a very expensive chemical before they are covered by the topsoil.

But potatoes are not the only crop that suffers the consequences of the US blockade. There are several vegetables that require that the seeds be imported from Europe and Asia, something that increases the shipping costs by more than 50 percent. For the 2004-2005 agricultural season, the additional expense reached 1.02 million dollars.

The blockade has seriously affected the island’s fruit production. Cuban farmers are deprived of a large number of highly useful agricultural and industrial technologies developed in the United States, a nation that with a substantial experience and research related to these crops.

Each year, Cuban fruit farmers buy around fifty million dollars in supplies for their operations, which they obtain mainly from European nations. If those supplies were to be bought in the US, the lower shipping costs would represent savings amounting to seven and half million dollars.

Specialized farm machinery and equipment used by the fruit agro-industry could also be bought at better prices and of a higher quality in the US marketplace.

Pork, one of the favorite foods of the Cuban people, has suffered from the biological war when the African swine flu was introduced into the nation, an epidemic that appeared when government plans for increased production were just beginning to show results.

Another area where Cuba has been hurt by subsequent US administrations is in the production of animal feeds.

Cuba is a tropical country, where adequate climatic conditions do not exist for the production of the grains required for the production of animal feed. As a result these must be bought from far away suppliers, something that adds some two million dollars in shipping costs, only in the area of grains for pork production.

Cuban farmers are also deprived of access to the latest generation of antibiotics, vaccines, disinfectants and other supplies that are essential for the production of pork meat. Losses in animals amounts to 1.4 million dollars each year.

The US is the world's main producer of eggs and poultry meat, and it is also the most important producer of supplies linked to the high technology production of both.

The blockade keeps Cuba from buying equipment and components with US technology that could lower the production costs and increase the yields of Cuban poultry and egg production. Although the island has achieved, with locally developed techniques, a substantial increase in production efficiency, introducing US technologies would mean better results.

The United States has an infrastructure for the supply of building materials used in the construction of farm infrastructure including animal water supply dispensers, roofing materials, ventilation equipment and other related items that Cuban farmers can not acquire due to the blockade.

Not having access to the latest technology in the production of poultry meat has brought the local industry to a total standstill, due to the high costs involved under the present conditions. According to the state owned corporation Union de Empresas Avicolas, more than 4,000 workers were sent to do other tasks when the poultry meat production farms had to be shut down.

Not having access to the US market for fertilized eggs and day old chickens, has made it necessary for Cuba to keep an extensive operation to take care of pure breeds of hens and roosters, that costs the nations some two million dollars a year.

The US Government’s ability to pressure the European laboratory Intervet of Holland to not sell to Cuba more effective vaccines for the prevention of avian diseases, is yet another of the ways that the blockade has hurt the island’s farmers. Cuba was also unable to buy the Marek vaccine, specific for a poultry disease, and the vaccine that immunizes the flocks against Gumboro, New Castle, Bronchitis and Retrovirus diseases.

If Cuban farmers had access to US advanced technologies in animal feeding, with the same number of existing birds now in production, the number of eggs would increase by 300 million and 8,800 tons of more poultry meat would be produced.

The direct cost of the blockade against poultry production amounts to 59.6 million dollars a year.

The continuation of the present US policy impedes the development of the Cuban poultry industry's technological capacities and limits efforts to guarantee a stable and safe protein supply for the Cuban people.