American rice farmers pledged on Thursday to lobby for the end to US trade and travel sanctions against communist-run Cuba, which has rapidly become their third largest market after Mexico and Japan.
The US Rice Producers Association signed a commitment to increase sales to Cuba's food import agency Alimport, while undertaking "to work in favour of the repeal of existing trade and travel restrictions applied to Cuba."
The association, which represents the rice producers of Texas, Missouri and Mississippi, as well farmers in Arkansas, California and Louisiana, said it disagreed with President George W. Bush's policy of tightening sanctions against Havana.
"We have agreed to disagree on Cuba," the group's president Dwight Roberts, said at a news conference.
Since the four-decade-old trade embargo was eased four years ago to exempt food sales, Cuba has bought almost $700 million in US agricultural products for cash.
American exports of milled and paddy rice have risen from zero to between 160,000 and 170,000 metric tons a year, Roberts said. Cuba imports 550,000 metric tons a year of rice, a key staple of the island's diet, mostly from China and Vietnam. Cuba used to be the largest market for US rice farmers before President Fidel Castro's 1959 revolution. The United States exports half its rice. This year's crop is forecast at a record 7.04 million metric tons, which is expected to push down prices.
"We are trying to change our laws. This embargo is dying a slow death and we would just like to speed up its demise," said Andy Hughes, a Texas rice farmer and a Bush supporter.
Earlier this year, Bush enforced new restrictions on travel and cash remittances to Cuba in an effort to undermine the financially-strapped Cuban government and bring about political change on the island.
Cuban food importer Pedro Alvarez, president of Alimport, said the restrictions will hurt American exporters if they succeed in curbing Cuba's hard currency income.
"If the restrictions increase, we will have to rethink what we to do next year, because to buy we need money," Alvarez said.
Roberts denied there were political strings attached to increased sales of rice to Cuba, which has spread out it food purchases through more than 35 US states.