Ag Lobby Targeting Cuba Ban

For four decades, Americans have been banned from selling virtually anything to Cuba. But problems in the U.S. farm economy are putting pressure on Congress to ease the embargo for sales of food and medical supplies.

The Senate overwhelmingly approved an amendment last month to an agricultural spending bill that would allow licensing of such exports, and the provision is expected to be a major issue as House and Senate negotiators try to reach a compromise this week on the bill.

“This is something that has absolutely been pushed onto the radar screen by the ag lobby groups,” said Jose Cardenas, director for the Cuban American National Foundation. “They’ve been playing this for all it’s worth, that Mr. and Mrs. Family Farmer are being pushed off their farms.”

Cardenas and other U.S. opponents of Fidel Castro have watched in dismay as a steady stream of farmers and members of Congress have trekked to Cuba in recent weeks to meet with the Cuban president and discuss potential agricultural trade.

Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., and Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., met with Castro for seven hours in August.

“I would hope that everyone would take a look at 40 years of history and say that embargoes to Cuba have done nothing but hurt the people of Cuba,” said Dorgan, who will be one of the Senate negotiators on the agricultural appropriations bill. “When you’ve got public policy that doesn’t work, then after four decades you might consider changing it.”

Farm groups and agribusinesses are clamoring to move a glut of grain that has depressed commodity prices for the second year in a row, and they’ve been pressuring Congress and the Clinton administration to remove all barriers to food exports.

The United States expects to export $49 billion worth of commodities this year, down from a peak $59.8 billion three years ago, and the Agriculture Department is forecasting only slight improvent in 2000.