Cuban farmers are pressing for greater autonomy to produce and sell their crops, blaming government inefficiency for Cuba’s falling food output despite agricultural reforms introduced by President Raúl Castro.

In meetings around the country, they have complained that the communist government is not providing the inputs they need and has failed in its basic role of getting their produce to market, according to meeting participants and media reports.

Their pleas, which are being aired at meetings of the National Association of Small Farmers, are significant because they seek to move away from government control of agriculture, which has been one of the pillars of Cuban communism.

At issue are regulations guaranteeing the state’s near monopoly of the distribution system through its long-standing practice of contracting for 75 percent of what farmers produce in exchange for supplying fuel, pesticides, fertilizer and other supplies otherwise not available.

The farmers say the state often fails to deliver inputs when they need them and undercuts production by not picking up and distributing crops in a timely fashion, which leaves their produce rotting in fields and warehouses.

The latter has become such a problem that Cuba’s state-run press recently reported that farmers basically want the state to get out of the way.

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