Farmers seldom find themselves helping to open the door to normal relations with another country, but that's the role delegates to the recent food fair in Cuba played.
It's clear to us that political support for the U.S. trade embargo against Cuba is evaporating -- and for good reason. The 40-year-old embargo made sense when it was imposed, at the height of the Cold War.
But the world has changed since then. The Iron Curtain has fallen; the U.S. has normal trade relations with Russia, China and Vietnam; Cuba no longer occupies a strategic role in the old Cold War standoff between the West and the Soviet Bloc and its allies.
This is what Cuba is today: a poor island nation of 11.2 million people who are prisoners of a repressive government that has failed to provide adequately for their material and nutritional needs.
History has rendered its verdict: Societies that provide political and economic freedom for their citizens flourish, while repressive regimes degenerate and eventually fall.
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We are not persuaded by arguments that it is in the best interests of the United States to maintain the embargo, which two years ago was eased to permit humanitarian shipments of food and medicine. The embargo has failed to dislodge Castro; he has outlasted eight U.S. presidents, and his hold on power likely will remain secure, with or without the U.S. embargo.
Meanwhile, ordinary Cubans and American farmers are paying the price for a failed policy. In today's global marketplace, it is vitally important for U.S. farmers to have access to markets. According to the American Farm Bureau Federation, its member farm families derive 30 percent of their income from sales to foreign markets. Their competitors in Canada and Europe -- all western democracies, all allies that share U.S. political values -- have had unrestricted access to the Cuban market.
That disparity should end. And the silly contradictions in U.S. policy toward Cuba should end. Farmers in North Dakota, Minnesota and elsewhere should be able to sell directly to Cuban buyers without having to go through a foreign bank, as now required under U.S. law. Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., deserves credit for helping to open the door to allow food sales to Cuba; we support his efforts to allow sellers to make credit sales -- provided taxpayers are not on the hook -- and to allow U.S. banks to serve as financial intermediaries in food sales to Cuba.
It wasn't that long ago that Castro declared that Cuba wouldn't buy a single grain of rice from the United States. A hurricane named Michelle devasted central Cuban fields and changed his mind. Now Castro's government wants to buy American commodities and food products in huge quantities; sales from the recent U.S. food fair alone reached $89 million, including sales made by Dakota Growers Pasta, the North Dakota State Mill, Cargill and Northarvest Bean Growers, to name just a few companies or associations from this region. Ultimately, Castro bowed to common sense. So should the United States in ending its wrong-headed embargo against Cuba. The Cold War is over.
Forum editorials represent the opinion of Forum management and the newspaper's Editorial Board
