Arkansas Rice Growers Hope Restrictions Lifted On Cuban Trade
May 30,2007 00:00
by
dailynews
As U.S. Rep. Marion Berry attends agriculture trade talksthis week in Cuba, Arkansas rice producers and others watch from afar, 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 U.S. 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.
Hardin said the U.S. trade rules on Cuba limit how goods can be sold,
particularly the Treasury Department's requirement that all be purchased in
cash in advance of their delivery.
The rule, put in place in 2000 and later clarified in 2005, burst a one-year
bubble of increased trade with Cuba, Hardin said. A commission report shows the
state exported $21.6 million in meat products and about $10 million in grain
exports in 2004. That dropped down to $2.7 million in total exports in 2005,
after the rule clarification.
"They began enforcing it," Hardin said. "2005 reflects that."
Now, U.S. producers have a unique opportunity to enter Cuba's rice market,
said Keith Glover, president and chief executive of Producers Rice Mill at
Stuttgart, a farmer-owned cooperative. Glover said ocean freight rates jumped
in the last few months, making shipping to Cuba from the Asian rice market even
more expensive.
"It really makes U.S. rice very competitive now," he said. "U.S. rice has a
premium with the value of the rice, but the freight rates are such an
advantage."
Expanding exports could help another Arkansas company as well. Cuba
represents 3% of Springdale-based Tyson Foods Inc.'s chicken leg quarter
exports, said spokesman Gary Mickelson, making it the company's fifth-largest
destination for the dark-meat product.
Berry, D-Ark., arrived Monday in Havana as part of a delegation of five
congressional members attending the agricultural summit that lasts through
Wednesday. Berry, whose father's own rice deal collapsed after the Castro-led
revolution in 1959, has supported lifting U.S. trade embargoes against the
nation.
Berry, as well as U.S. Rep. Mike Ross, D-Ark., are co-sponsors on a bill
proposed in the House to eliminate the 45-year trade embargo on Cuba. The bill
remains in committee.
For Yielding, he said he understands the idea behind the embargo, but
believes it should only apply to high-end electronics and other products that
can be used to support the government. Otherwise, Cuba will continue to import
its rice from China, Vietnam and Thailand, which also have poor human rights
records, he said.
Opening the food market benefits the Cuba's poor - as well as U.S. rice
growers, he said.
"I think that history has showed us economic sanctions when it comes to food
don't work. Why would you want to starve the people?" he said. "Why would you
want to do that and build up even more resentment to the United States?"