🇨🇺 The cattle breeds of Cuba

Cuba's farms live mostly by crops: sugarcane, tobacco, citrus and vegetables grown in city gardens. Cattle keep a quiet corner of that story. Milk is the product linked to them, tied to Fidel Castro's years and to Ubre Blanca, a cow whose name means White Udder.

• The one cattle name that surfaces in Cuba's farm story is Ubre Blanca, a cow whose name means White Udder.
• Family farmers and cooperatives now run about 69% of Cuba's farmland.
• Nine-tenths of Havana's fresh produce comes from the city's own farms and gardens.
• Soviet buyers paid Cuba over five times the going rate for its sugarcane.
• Cuban farm output fell by 54% between 1989 and 1994 as Soviet support vanished.

Cattle in Cuba

Cattle keep a small place in Cuba's farming story. For centuries the island's fields have belonged to crops: sugarcane cleared the forests under Spanish rule, sugar and citrus went first to the United States and then to the Soviet Union at premium prices, and tobacco from Pinar del Río still earns hard money. When Soviet support ended in 1991, harvests fell by more than half and farming turned largely organic, so the government handed food production to small farmers. Today cooperatives and family farmers work most of the land, much of it under usufruct, a right to farm state land without owning it. Against that crop-led background, cattle and dairy sit quietly at the margins.

Milk, butter and beef

Milk is the one cattle product that stands out in Cuba's farm story, and it is tied to the years of Fidel Castro. Beside his name stands that of a single animal: Ubre Blanca, a cow whose Spanish name means White Udder. The farm goods Cuba sends abroad come from other lines of work: cigars rolled from Pinar del Río tobacco, raw sugar, rum and citrus sold in Europe.