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by Stewart Truelsen

A new market is developing for American farmers. "If you put politics aside and actually look at the agricultural trade, we are doing very, very well with Cuba," said American Farm Bureau Federation Senior Economist John Skorburg.

Cuba purchased $138.4 million in agricultural products from the United States in calendar year 2002, and Skorburg is even more excited about this year. "If you look at the first six months of this year, we are already over $100 million in agricultural sales to Cuba. Those are big numbers." Most of the sales are in bulk and intermediate commodities. For the first half of the year, sales of soybean oil 77 percent, poultry meat 43 percent and corn 38 percent.

"Two years ago, Cuba wasn’t even on our radar screen. After 2002, they are actually one of the top 50 countries the United States trades with now. Down the road it is not out of line to think that Cuba is going to pop into our top 25 and could do even more than that," said Skorburg. There’s plenty of upside because Cuba imports $600 million of food annually. It could be a lot more if the Caribbean nation’s beleaguered economy improves.

The American Farm Bureau supports normal trading relations with Cuba. Three years ago the Congress passed and the president signed into law a measure to allow sales of food and medicine to Cuba, an easing of the 42-year trade embargo. Purchases must be in cash and trade is one-way.

Recently Cuba signed agreements with Alabama and the port of Mobile to start buying food from there. The president of the Cuban food import agency indicated that the initial purchase would be $10 million worth of poultry and dairy products. Ports in Florida, Texas and Georgia already have agreements with Cuba.

The easing of the Cuban trade embargo has yielded positive results for American agriculture and undoubtedly helps the Cuban people. This is reminiscent of grain sales to another communist country, the former Soviet Union, and we know what happened there.