With record numbers of tourists traveling to Cuba, including from the U.S., visitors are eating more than their fair share of the island’s food, says The New York Times. Onions, green peppers, garlic and avocados — staples of the local diet — are now scarce, since they’ve largely been sold to privately-owned restaurants on the island that serve tourists.
“It’s a disaster,” Lisset Felipe, who sells air conditioners for the Cuban government, told the Times. “We never lived luxuriously, but the comfort we once had doesn’t exist anymore.”
State-run markets have also sold out of tomatoes, lettuce and pineapples. But the less regulated co-ops, which cater to the private restaurants called paladares, are still full of produce and spices. Even special items like grapes and celery show up there. Private restaurant owners are the only ones in Cuba who have the money to pay for these foods, says the Times.
Cuba still imports 70-80 percent of its food, with the majority of its corn, poultry and soybeans coming from the U.S. But while the U.S. embargo on imports to Cuba makes procuring food there more difficult, the food shortages on the island are also thanks to haphazard planning by Cuban officials, says the Times.
The number of privately-owned restaurants on the island has jumped from 100 to 1,600 thanks to open-market reforms put in place in 2011. Nearly 3.5 million people visited Cuba last year — more than ever before.