HAVANA, Cuba--Food production in Havana province is 40 per cent below target this year, causing shortages in the Cuban capital despite reforms under President Raul Castro, official media said on Wednesday.

Cuba's most populous province, which includes the capital city of Havana, is also the country's biggest food producer.

Residents have been complaining about a lack of basics such as sweet potatoes and other root vegetables in the markets.

An article in Communist Party newspaper Granma said the government had not provided enough farm supplies or fuel and that state regulations had hampered delivery of farm products.

"Cooperatives and farmers did not receive fertilizer and the chemicals needed to protect their crops during the last four months of 2009," Granma said, adding that other factors such as the late arrival of imported seed added to the crisis.

A telephone survey of five other provincial capitals on Wednesday indicated there were no similar shortages there.

Castro has made increasing food output a priority since taking over from older brother Fidel Castro two years ago.

Cuba is in the throes of a financial crisis in part because it spends heavily to import two-thirds of its food.

Castro has raised prices the state pays for produce, leased state lands to farmers, decentralized decision-making, allowed provincial producers to sell a small part of their produce directly to consumers and reorganized huge state farms.

However, a decades-old system where the state provides fuel, pesticides, fertilizer and other resources to farmers in exchange for 70 per cent to 80 per cent of what they produce remains unchanged.

"The Cuban government can't seem to relax its control sufficiently to allow these incentive systems to fully function, and it seems unable to provide the most basic inputs to farmers," William Messina, an agricultural economist at the University of Florida who has researched Cuba, told Reuters.

"Until these situations are remedied, I'm afraid that agricultural output levels will at best stagnate," he said.

Granma gave numerous examples of state regulations hampering food production and distribution, including the state's domination of the distribution process.

"There is an almost unanimous demand of producers: access to Havana's markets without (state) intermediaries," it said.