A photo of an onion held in the palm of a hand, captioned with the question "Is this from Earth or Saturn?", has sparked outrage among hundreds of Cubans in the Facebook group "Cuba Denuncia Now." The post garnered 274 reactions and a cascade of comments pointing to the agricultural collapse and the regime's inability to manage prices.
This is not a rhetorical question. At the Línea y L agricultural market in Havana, a vendor demanded 910 Cuban pesos for a single onion—a figure that musician Dagoberto Pedraja exposed on September 12—even though the officially approved price by Havana's Provincial Agriculture Delegation is 180 CUP per pound.
Elsewhere in the capital, the same item was priced between 1,500 and 1,800 CUP per pound.
The Historical Surge in Onion Prices
The phenomenon is not new. As early as April 2026, prices reached up to 900 CUP per onion in informal markets and street carts, and by September 2025, prices exceeded 1,000 CUP per pound in several provinces.
To grasp the scale of the issue, consider these prices against actual incomes: The minimum wage, effective since July 2026, is 3,210 CUP per month, and the average official salary closed out 2025 at 6,930 CUP. A single onion can represent between 13% and 28% of a worker's entire monthly earnings.
Economic Struggles in Cuban Households
Economists estimate that a Cuban family requires approximately 96,000 CUP monthly to cover basic needs, with around 70,070 CUP going solely towards food—more than ten times the minimum wage.
The official year-over-year inflation rate reached 25.19% in August 2026, with food and non-alcoholic beverages accounting for 63.18% of the total increase in the consumer price index.
Diverse Perspectives on the Crisis
The comments in the viral post articulate two complementary diagnoses.
The first points to the regime's ineffectiveness. "The main culprits are the leaders who meet daily to control prices, but it's pointless, and then they keep raising wages, and the more they raise, the higher the prices soar," wrote Carlos Leonel Quesada.
Ivis Leyva Díaz was more direct: "It's not from Saturn... It's grown in Cuban lands. The problem is we have a government that has ignored its people. Besides being inept, it's incapable of even regulating prices."
The second diagnosis highlights the structural collapse of Cuban agriculture. Grissel Rodríguez Valle summed up decades of failure with a stark image: "An Agrarian Reform that left all the fields filled with marabou, where they created ineffective plans, protocols, procedures, a Ministry with more offices than planted acres across the country, which is why now an onion is like a diamond from Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom."
The numbers support this depiction: marabou covers between 1.1 and 1.7 million hectares of previously productive soils, and Cuba imports between 70% and 80% of the food it consumes, costing nearly 2 billion dollars annually.
In 2024, the Ministry of Agriculture itself acknowledged that the sector received only 10% of the necessary fuel and that just 7% of agricultural land had irrigation.
Meanwhile, the regime issued 10,000 and 20,000 peso bills this week—a reflection of the rapid depreciation of the Cuban peso—and the dollar in the informal market hovered around 700 CUP in mid-September.
Understanding Cuba's Agricultural and Economic Crisis
Why are onion prices so high in Cuba?
Onion prices in Cuba are soaring due to a combination of agricultural collapse and the government's inability to control market prices effectively. Structural issues in farming and high inflation have compounded the problem.
How does the onion price impact Cuban families?
The high cost of onions significantly affects Cuban families, as a single onion can consume a large portion of a monthly salary, making it difficult for families to afford basic necessities.
What are the contributing factors to the agricultural decline in Cuba?
Contributing factors include ineffective agricultural plans and protocols, lack of resources such as fuel and irrigation, and a government focus on bureaucracy over productivity.