• Submitted by: manso
• United States
• Politics and Government
• 08 / 03 / 2010

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Congress considering bill that would ease U.S. trade restrictions.

Updated: 12:06 a.m. Monday, Aug. 2, 2010. Texas rice farmers have been watching intently as Congress ponders a bill that would lift restrictions of a decades-old trade embargo and allow tourists to travel to Cuba. Passage of the bill also would open the island country's market to U.S.agriculture.

Farmers in and around Egypt, a tiny agricultural community near Houston , generally describe themselves as conservative (with a few exceptions), but they are more than willing to speak favorably about opening up trade to Cuba.

"Farmers are bottom line-oriented," said Thomas Wynn, an economist and rice farmer from Egypt.

Members of Wynn's family have been working their land in Egypt since the 1800s. They are solid Texas A&M Aggies , and they're glad to pepper conversations with jokes about the University of Texas Longhorns.

These days, one of the big topics of discussion in the Wynn household — and throughout rice-growing country in the southeast part of the state — has been the Travel Restriction Reform and Export Enhancement Act of 2010, a bill in Congress that would lift the travel ban and allow the sale of more American goods to Cuba.

Wynn said the bill could be a key to sustaining the Texas rice farming business, which has been hit lately with diving prices and rising production costs.

"The impacts would be enough to ensure the survival of a significant percentage of Texas agriculture," Wynn said. He added that family operations in the Southern states with easy access to the Gulf of Mexico could benefit, in particular, if the bill becomes law.

Members of Congress recently passed the Cuba bill out of the U.S. House of Representatives' Agriculture Committee.

Similar efforts have failed in previous Congresses, but this just might be the year farmers have been waiting for, said Parr
Rosson, a professor and economist in the Department of Agricultural Economics at Texas A&M's Texas AgriLife Extension. A weak U.S. economy, a new presidential administration and heavy lobbying pressure from the Texas Farm Bureau and other organizations give the bill a reasonable shot at passing.

"This is the best chance in the last several years," he said.

A travel and trade embargo was established in the early 1960s as U.S. relations with the new communist country and its leader, Fidel Castro, deteriorated. Cuba had been a primary market for Texas rice, but after the embargo, the tiny nation was forced to begin buying rice from places as far away as Vietnam.

Dwight Roberts, president and CEO of the U.S. Rice Producers Association, said the bill that passed the House Agriculture Committee could be a step toward restoring Texas' place as a main supplier of rice to Cuba. "It just makes so much sense," he said.

About 10 years ago, some U.S. trade was permitted with Cuba, but there was a thorny twist: All payments had to be passed through a third country, which added cost and complication.

If the bill lifts the cumbersome restrictions, agricultural exports from Texas to Cuba would jump by $18.4 million annually — nearly doubling Texas' 2009 figure of $20.6 million, according to a report Rosson co-wrote for AgriLife Research, which conducts studies that support the state's agricultural and natural resource industries.

Trade with Cuba would represent a small piece of Texas' agricultural business, but exports to Cuba would generate $16 million in new business activity and 320 jobs in Texas, according to AgriLife.

On the national level, a policy change would lead to $365 million more a year in U.S. exports, which would come with $1.1 billion in new business activity and 6,000 new jobs, Rosson said.

"At a time when we are struggling to create jobs, this is a bill that would help solve at least part of the problem," he said.

Texas rice farmers, like the Wynns, are particularly well-positioned to take advantage of a policy change that would open up Cuba.

Some Texas rice farmers are barely profitable now, and they have said that trade with Cuba would allow for periods of consistent solvency.

For the past several years, many people in Texas rice country have been complaining about how difficult it has been to make any money. They said they see Cuba as a way to increase profits and allow them to continue growing rice for people in the U.S. and around the world.

By Tim Eaton

AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF

Source: www.statesman.com