Eight Senators and 21 Representatives traveled with President Obama for his historic two-day visit to Cuba earlier this week, as well as Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, along with three other Cabinet officials. Devry Boughner Vorwerk and Paul Johnson, chair and co-chair of the U.S. Agriculture Coalition for Cuba, of which the National Chicken Council is a member, were also there. It is hoped that the president’s visit will help with opening up trade to Cuba and get Congress on board to finally end the U.S. embargo.
Cuba imports as much as 80 percent of its food and represents a market worth about $2 billion annually. U.S. exports to Cuba climbed to around $700 million in 2008, but decreased to $200 million in 2015. Chicken is one of the island nation’s top imports and an exemption to the embargo for agricultural products has made Cuba the fifth-largest export market for U.S. poultry producers.
In 2000, Congress allowed agricultural trade with Cuba. However, five year’s later trade was curtailed by new export-finance rules requiring Cuba’s official import agency to pay cash before any shipments were delivered. Financing from U.S. lenders was not allowed.
Despite those export-finance restrictions, chicken exports to Cuba have remained relatively strong. Over the last 15 years, approximately $1 billion of U.S. poultry, most of it frozen legs and thighs, have been delivered to Cuba via cargo ships departing from such ports as Jacksonville, Mobile, New Orleans, and Savannah. “They can place an order on a Monday and probably have the product on a Friday, if they need it,” Jim Sumner, president of the USA Poultry and Egg Export Council, told Bloomberg.
Most of the U.S. chicken products, which is the most affordable protein available to Cubans, currently end up in state run and private food shops. However, as U.S. policy adjusts over time and more Americans travel to Cuba, poultry trade to Cuba could expand to other products such as breast meat, nuggets, and wings.
“The only amount of limitations on the amount of product that goes there is limited by Cuba’s economy,” Sumner said. “So as we see Cuba’s economy improve and prosper, we would see more product going down.”
