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Rice
Producers Watch Cuba Trade Talks
By Jon Gambrell, Associated
Press Writer. Yahoo!
News.
LITTLE ROCK, 29 (AP) -- 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.
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 officer
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 percent
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?"
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