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A shipment of livestock including 140 cattle -one born during the trip- arrived in Cuba, the first significant batch of American animals to be sold here.
The shipment was made under a 2000 exception to the long-standing U.S. trade embargo on Cuba. American agricultural products can be sold to the island as long as transactions are done in cash or by financing from a third country.
"This opens a new road," for American farm sales to Cuba, said Pedro Alvarez, president of Cuba's food import firm Alimport.
After a drenching tropical rainstorm, the containers holding the Jersey and Holstein dairy cows, three bulls, 12 bison and one shorthorn sheep were unloaded in the afternoon from the cargo vessel operated by the American firm Crowley Liner Service.
The livestock, largely from Homedale Farms in St. Charles, Minnessota, originated in Gulf-port, Mississipi.
More such shipments, all negotiated during an agribusiness fair in Havana last fall, are expected in the coming weeks, Alvarez said.
Alvarez didn't have specific figures on the value of this shipment.
But Alvarez said that since Cuba began buying U.S. farm goods in late 2001 it has signed deals to spend $481 million on agricultural products including transportation costs.
The U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council, which tracks trade between the two nations, reported in its newsletter this week that about $233 million in sales had been completed thus far..
