Diaz-Canel to US Farmers: “An 11 Million Person Market Should Not Be Dismissed”
Among others, the meeting was attended by former US Secretary of Agriculture and current CEO of US Dairy Export Council, Thomas Vilsack.
By Sergio Alejandro Gómez
“When we buy food products, we think of 11 million people, which is the Cuban population”, said this Thursday, the Cuban president Miguel Díaz-Canel to a delegation of agribusiness men and executives from the agriculture sector in the United States.
“Eleven million people is not a market to dismiss”, added the Cuba leader during a working meeting held at the Permanent Mission of Cuba to the United Nations.
The meeting was attended by former US Secretary of Agriculture and current CEO of US Dairy Export Council, Thomas Vilsack, different states’ agriculture commissioners, executives from groups of leading export enterprises and leaders from the agricultural sector.
Presently, Cuba has to spend more than two thousand million dollars to import food products, explained Diaz-Canel to the agribusinessmen, and it does so amid “very complex conditions, with countries which are far from Cuba, where the shipment costs are high, where the prices are raised because they are aware of our necessities”.
“To be able to buy food products, which are of good quality, produced by you, for us will represent advantages and opportunities”, he further stated.
“It will also allow us to transfer technologies; there are people who have estimated that a relation with the US agribusiness sector could increase, for example, the production of pork in our country”.
US agricultural products sales are at the worst level in 12 years. With these market’s fluctuations and the trade war by Donald Trump Administration, tens of thousands small family farms are being affected.
The industry supports around 17 million jobs in the United States and politicians from agricultural states are interested in containing a crisis similar to the one that occurred during the last decade.
Cuba, located at just 90 miles from US coasts, is an attractive destination. However, the current laws hinder potential negotiations.
When in 2000 a breach was open to the United States blockade to sell food products, trade increased quickly to some hundreds of million dollars.
The change introduced by the William Clinton Administration to the Trade Sanction Reform and Export Enhancement Act was in one way only. It allowed Cuba to buy US agricultural products but it maintained the prohibitions to exports.
The island was subjected to burdensome conditions like paying in cash in advance, something that is uncommon at the international market, apart from the restrictions imposed to transportation established by the laws of blockade.
Despite all this, during the last 15 years Cuba has spent more than five thousand million dollars in the purchase of US agricultural products, according to data provided by the Cuba Trade and Economic Council.
The potential is even bigger. That’s the reason why the agribusiness sector is the one that most actively defend at Congress, the end of the barriers imposed to trade with the island.
A bipartisan group composed by more than 60 agricultural associations, enterprises and elected officials from 17 US States, recently urged the members of Congress to adopt an amendment to the Farm Bill of 2018 that would open the agricultural trade with Cuba.
According to the text, US agribusiness groups want to have participation in an 11 million people market that receives the annual influx of three to five million tourists.
According to the Congressional Budget Office and a research by Engage Cuba, the amendments would save US taxpayers 690 million dollars in ten years.
Legislator Roger Marshall, Republic representative from Kansas and one of this law’s drivers, stated to Dominio Cubathat amendments being currently debated between the Senate and the House included a chapter that “will allow us to do marketing for agricultural products in Cuba and to work in the process of financing Cuba purchases”.
On the fact that this projects is being shut down despite being widely supported, Marshall further explained that this is about plain and simple “politics”.
“There is a minority of individuals at Congress who have a lot of power in this issue, but we are trying to overcome that. As everyone knows, there’s a vast majority of US citizens who would like to see off the blockade. My own children do not have a slight idea of what the embargo is about”.
The Cuban President shared a similar opinion:
“When one tries to analyse what’s happening, the reasons for this setback in the process of reestablishment of relations we were working on during the Obama’s second term, we believe it has to do only with the fact that there are interests by a minority that profiting from politics try to thwart those relations”, he expressed.
Senator from Florida Marco Rubio asserted last June that he would block any amendment or project that would favour agricultural trade with Cuba.
“I have decided to block the addition of any new amendments to #FarmBill until they either accept the Cruz amendment striking the use of taxpayer money for promotions in #Cuba or they accept my amendment that prohibits taxpayer money being spent at business owned by Cuban military.”, wrote Rubio in his Twitter account.
The politician of Cuba origin, one of the masterminds behind the change of policy against Cuba by the Trump Administration, has subordinated his legislative agenda to the opportunities to attack Havana.
“Above all, we just wanted to convey and share with you this morning, in New York, that independently of the tightening of the blockade and the measures adopted against Cuba by the current US Administration, we are still open to the dialogue with the United States”, referred Diaz-Canel to US agribusiness men.
