The leader of an association of U.S. state agricultural officials said Wednesday that Cuba may want to take advantage of ongoing reforms, perhaps through investments.
“It looks like a new Cuba is being born, and it could be a path toward greater cooperation,” Ted McKinney, CEO of the State Department of Agriculture and Agriculture Association, told Reuters at a farm cooperative outside Havana. Told.
Cuba is in the midst of its worst economic crisis in decades, with food, medicine, fuel and other essentials in short supply and prices soaring.
A small Cuban town has produced decades of Olympic boxers and gold medals in a makeshift training facility.
The communist-ruled country is slowly implementing market reforms in response.
The cooperative was the last stop on a five-day visit by farm executives from seven states, where they met with President Miguel Diaz-Canel and others and visited various sites.
The United States has maintained comprehensive sanctions against Cuba since Fidel Castro’s 1959 revolution.
Ted McKinney, CEO of the National Association of State Departments of Agriculture and Agriculture (NASDA), listens to stories from Cuban farmers during a visit by NASDA members to an agricultural cooperative on the outskirts of Havana, Cuba, on February 21, 2024. (Reuters/Noris Perez)
But in 2000, Congress authorized cash sales of agricultural products to Cuba, which have totaled more than $7 billion to date.
Commissioners from Louisiana, Indiana, South Carolina, Michigan and Montana all told Reuters at the Co-op that they felt Cuba was changing. They pointed out that in the past two years, more than 10,000 non-agricultural small and medium-sized enterprises have emerged, including those related to the supply of agricultural products and food processing.
“This trend is positive,” said Hugh Weathers of the South Carolina Department of Agriculture.
Don Lamb of Indiana said he views Cuba’s emerging private sector as “interesting and exciting.”
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Cuba has also opened its agricultural sector to foreign investment for decades, including about 200,000 private farms and thousands of cooperatives.
To date, no investment from the United States has been approved, but investment from other countries has begun.
McKinney said it is not up to states to pass legislation, but that commissioners will report to Congress and federal agencies on market potential.
