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NAPI
lands new deal with Cuba
By Lindsay Whitehurst. The
Daily Times, 05/31/2007.
FARMINGTON - Navajo Agricultural Products
Industry, which is a Navajo Nation farm
operation, announced a deal Wednesday to
sell $137,000 worth of pinto and black beans
to Cuba.
While the contract is relatively small
for both the Navajo Nation and the communist
country, NAPI officials said it's the beginning,
it is hoped, of $16 million in trade.
"In the next couple of years, we hope
to be shipping some of the processed potatoes.
If we can get the corn volume and make that
agreement, we'd be shipping corn as well
as wheat," NAPI General Manager Tsosie
Lewis said.
Under the deal, to be finalized today,
NAPI would grow 170 metric tons of pinto
and 62 metric tons of black beans for Alimport,
Cuba's state food processing agent. The
beans would be delivered in October.
Lewis said the farm got a good price for
its beans, 28 to 32 cents per hundred weight.
NAPI officials completed the deal in Cuba
during the country's annual commodities
conference, where the contract was one of
$150 million in sales.
Roselyn Yazzie, manager for NAPI's bean
corporation, and NAPI Chief Financial Officer
Colaine Curtis, both arrived in Cuba on
Monday and will return at the end of the
week.
As a Navajo Nation enterprise, NAPI isn't
subject to the United States' more than
40-year-old trade embargo with Cuba.
But under humanitarian exemptions, about
200 American growers already sell food to
the country, Lewis said.
"The growers in the Midwest, people
that raise black beans and rice, are shipping
commodities to Cuba through Canada,"
he said.
Lewis provided a list of 12 other American
companies, from Purdue Farms to Hormel Foods,
who signed contracts with Alimport this
week for everything from soybeans to Spam.
NAPI's beans will be delivered in October
via shipping container from Corpus Christi,
Texas. The farm is working with two banks,
Wells Fargo and Chase, to transfer the payment
to an overseas bank and then wire it to
NAPI, because Cuban money by law can't be
stored in U.S. banks.
Nearly a year ago, the farm signed a letter
of intent to sell crops to Cuba, and predicted
the contract would be worth about $16 million
over the next few years. Lewis credited
Rep. Tom Udall, D-N.M., with helping secure
the contract by organizing the trade mission.
While NAPI doesn't produce some of Cuba's
most in-demand commodities, such as rice,
beef and cotton, Lewis said selling larger
volumes of products such as corn, beans
and wheat will increase trade
"To us, Cuba is just a buyer ... like
Frito Lay or American Italian pasta,"
Lewis said.
NAPI holds $2 million contracts with those
two companies.
The only other international contracts
the farm holds are with six Mexican buyers,
to whom they sell 90 percent of their pinto
beans.
"It really shows the quality of product
(NAPI farmers) are putting out. The demand
has risen. People are now starting to come
look at NAPI," board chairman Ervin
Chavez said. "I think demand is going
to grow in years to come."
Lindsay Whitehurst: lwhitehurst@daily-times.com
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