TRADE-CUBA: US Agribusiness Mission Scouts Business Opportunities

By Patricia Grogg Reprint | | Print |

Patricia Grogg

HAVANA, Jan 13 2000 (IPS) - A group of agribusiness representatives from the United States ended Thursday a four-day working visit to Cuba, where they studied possibilities of doing business with this Caribbean island nation in the future.

US farmers comprise one of the sectors most keen on seeing the four-decade economic embargo against Cuba lifted. Last year, agribusiness representatives from the states of Texas and Illinois made similar visits.

“We are here to explore business opportunities in Cuban agriculture, including trade. We are looking towards the future,” the president of the Citizens Network for Foreign Affairs, John Costello, told the Cuban state-controlled press.

The Network, a non-profit organisation dedicated to stimulating international economic growth in developing and emerging world markets, coordinated the visit, which began Monday.

In Costello’s view, there would be opportunities for selling rice, wheat and other products to Cuba, which in turn could export tobacco to the United States, if the blockade were eased as desired by a growing sector of the US business community.

John Block, former agriculture secretary and the head of Food Distributors International, said that on their return, the 15 members of the mission would ask their legislators to work towards the elimination of the restrictions prohibiting business with Cuba.

Block maintained that the embargo was counterproductive, and pointed out that the United States had normal relations with Vietnam.

“It is time to move forward,” said Block, referring to the need for a change in Washington’s policy towards Cuba, which has been open to foreign investment in practically all sectors of the economy since last decade.

To become familiar with Cuba’s agricultural sector, the members of the mission met with state officials and toured farming cooperatives and research centres.

Among the companies participating in the US delegation were AGCO, a distributor of farm equipment, Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), the Dow Agrosciences and Syfrett Fedd research divisions, pesticide-maker American Cyanamid, the Iowa Corn Promotion Board, Premium Standard Farms, a pork interest, and Mid-America ag Network, farming communications.

A similar mission came to Cuba last October, accompanying Illinois Governor George Ryan, while two months earlier several members of the influential Texas Farm Bureau visited the island.

According to studies by the US Grains Council, in the near future Cuba could become a market for one million tonnes of grains a year. But the 1996 Helms-Burton law stiffened the blockade, including a clause stipulating sanctions against companies from third party countries doing business with Cuba.

The US Department of Agriculture estimates annual net losses in sales of farm products resulting from embargos like the one in place against Cuba at 1.2 billion dollars.

US farmers, victims of the slump in commodity prices and bad weather, are staking their bets on getting a new hold on what was considered a natural market for their products up to the 1959 Cuban revolution.

Cuba spends around 900 million dollars a year on imports of foodstuffs, including more than 120 million dollars in grains, a figure that could be cut if it was able to import from the United States.

Health is another area which has caught the eye of the US business community. Peter Nathan, president of PWN Exhibicon International, obtained permission from the US Department of the Treasury to organise a Jan 25-29 exhibition of US products in Havana.

It will be the first US trade fair in Cuban territory since October 1959, when the American Association of Travel Agents met in Havana.

Washington broke off diplomatic relations with Havana in 1961, and declared an embargo the following year.