On Monday, Yahoo News reported that Cuba has cut the size of its daily breat ration because of a shortage of ingredients.

The article reports:

The bread, one of a handful of still subsidized basic food products in Cuba, will be reduced from 80 grams to 60 grams (2.1 oz), or approximately the weight of an average cookie or a small bar of soap. Its price, too, was slightly reduced, to just under 1 peso, or 1/3 of a cent.

Still, many Cubans, who earn around 4648 pesos a month, or around $15, can scarcely afford to shop for more expensive bread on the private market, leaving them with few alternatives.

“We have to accept it, what else can we do?” Havana-resident Dolores Fernandez told Reuters while she stood outside a bakery on Monday. “There’s no choice.”

Cuba last week said it had run short of the wheat flour it needs to produce the bread, a predicament the government blames on the U.S. trade embargo, a complex web of restrictions that complicates Cuba’s global financial transactions.

The Caribbean island nation is suffering from extreme shortages of food, fuel and medicine, shortfalls that have primed a record-breaking exodus of its citizens to the nearby United States.

Cuba’s ration book, or “libreta,” as it is known among island residents, was once considered a hallmark of Fidel Castro’s 1959 revolution, providing a range of deeply-discounted products to all Cubans, including bread, fish, meat, milk, and cleaning and toiletry supplies.

This is one example of what happens when the government controls the price of food. Price controls create scarcity.