Rice Producers Watch Cuba Trade Talks

As U.S. Rep. Marion Berry attends agriculture trade talks this week in Cuba, Arkansas rice producers and others are hoping restrictions on trade to the Communist nation will be lifted.Dropping current rules that require all purchases be paid in advance could let growers enter a market estimated to consume 700,000 tons of rice a year, of which only 79,000 tons came from the United States last year, said Greg Yielding, executive director of the Arkansas Rice Growers Association. That new market could buoy an industry whose European markets dwindled after discoveries of unapproved strains of genetically modified rice.

"Cuba could dwarf that," Yielding said. "We're just getting just a little bit of their capacity right now. The reason for that is the economic sanctions that we have to endure."

In Arkansas last year, farmers harvested 1.4 million acres of rice, worth more than $892 million, U.S. Department of Agriculture statistics show. Meanwhile, the state exported only $1.4 million worth of goods to the island nation last year, said Scooter Hardin, a spokesman for the Arkansas Economic Development Commission.