In light of the slowly fading global recession, Cuba is looking to boost domestic agricultural production, likely because the cost of buying internationally is going up, according to CBS News. 80 percent of the food for Cuba’s citizens are imports, however Cuba has had to slash imports by 30 percent to deal with a tight government budget.
Virginia Tobacco
But in the U.S., some states are seeing increases in agricultural trade with Cuba. Virginia is one such state. “Virginia’s agricultural exports to Cuba are expected to be up by more than 10 percent this year, even as overall U.S. food exports to the communist country decline, state officials said,” reports the Richmond Times-Dispatch.

Virginia has exported approximately $45 million in apples, chicken, soybeans, and other agricultural products to Cuba since September 2009, up by about $4.3 million from 2008.

How Cuba is able to pay for their imports is one of the biggest hurdles to continuing to grow sales in Virginia.

Congress currently has a bill (HR 1737, the Agricultural Export Facilitation Act of 2009) in committee that would allow the U.S. agriculture industry to more easily sell products to Cuba.
“If we could establish letters of credit here, it would help tremendously,” one Virginia farmer told the Times-Dispatch. “I don’t think we are going to eliminate the [trade] embargo right away, but we can certainly take small steps toward that.”