Cuba

A 'Neighbor' in Need: Why Cuba’s Energy Collapse Could Spark a U.S. Ag Export Surge

Mon, 30 Mar 2026 19:39:18 GMT

Cuba looks the worst Paul Johnson has seen it in the 20 years he’s spent traveling to the country. The Chair of the United States Agriculture Coalition for Cuba landed back in Miami, after a week in Havana. He experienced blackouts in the city, sometimes 24 hours at a time.

Humanitarian aid arrived on shore in Havanna on March 24. The country has begun restoring power after its third nationwide power outage in the last month. Johnson says Cuban’s are without refrigerators and few cars are running.

“That has a tremendous impact on people’s psyche, but also the daily life and how things get done not only in the cities, but in rural Cuba as well where the conditions are even worse,” Johnson says. “A lack of fuel impacts everything-- the entire system is dependent on electricity, the entire grid.”

$40-a-Gallon Gas and a Grid in Collapse

Johnson says gas costs about $40 a gallon on the black market in Cuba. “In the fields where production is happening, or not happening, tractors aren’t running,” he says. “We’re seeing a real challenge of getting food from the fields to markets.”

USDA reports, the U.S. exported $476.74 million in agricultural goods to Cuba in 2025. Poultry was the top commodity, accounting for about 62% of the sales. Johnson expects overall exports to drop this year, because the energy crisis is making it difficult to transport food. However, he believes there are many opportunities to expand U.S. exports in the future because food production is low.

(U.S. Department of Agriculture Foreign Agricultural Service)

““Because we are so close, because we’re building this relationship with the private sector, and because production in Cuba is so low that creates a need for U.S. exports,” he says.

In 2021, Cuba opened over 2,000 industries up to the private sector. The shift has opened the doors for U.S. agricultural exports. Johnson says today about 70% of agricultural sales are going to the private sector. “Why? Because they have money and the Cuban government does not,” Johnson says. “We’re also finding that this private sector reacts quicker as you can imagine. They’re much more dynamic and they’re filling in the gaps as they go along.”

Rice: A Massive Deficit for U.S. Growers to Fill

In 2024, a report by U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service says between marketing years 2016/17 and 2023/24 rice production in Cuba fell from 335,000 metric tons to 140,000 metric tons. USDA reported in 2025, Cuba imported about $16 million dollars of rice from the U.S.

“Cubans depend on rice in every meal. But production in Cuba is down to about 10%,” Johson says. “They consume around 700,000 tons of rice a year and they’re only producing about 75,000 times today. That is one example of the opportunities for our U.S. Rice producers to export more rice to Cubans.”

Looking Toward a Two-Way Future

Johnson says he believes two-way trade between the U.S. and the Caribbean country is incredibly important. “In my experience with American farmers, when they go down to Cuba, they’re really most interested in helping out their neighbors. They see Cuban farmers as their neighbors, and they want to help them,” he says.

He also believes collaboration between U.S Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Inspection Service and Cuba needs to improve in order to keep disease contained and increase Cuba’s food production.

“I think everyone I spoke to from the street to the government, the top of the government. Everyone says the same thing, ‘something’s got to change,” he says. “Everyone recognizes the need for change. What that change looks like? Is what we’re all trying to guess at.”

Single-Row Tractor Is Back and Headed for Cuba

Wed, 27 Jan 2021 20:08:25 GMT

The first wave of U.S. industry into Cuba in 55 years is riding a single-row tractor.

Cuban agriculture is a time capsule. Picture 63,000 dying tractors cobbled with scrapped parts. Groaning U.S. models from the 1940s and 1950s, or more likely decrepit Chinese and Russian beasts that hardly qualify as legacy machinery. Simply, Cuba is a tractor graveyard.

As economic opportunity opens in Cuba, agriculture is poised to be first through the door. Two U.S. businessmen are determined to build the first American-owned factory on Cuban soil since the embargo of 1960. Cleber LLC , headed by Saul Berenthal and Horace Clemmons, will supply single-row tractors to small Cuban farmers often reduced to livestock cultivation.

Born in Cuba, Berenthal left as a 16-year-old during the revolution in 1960. He lived the American dream with a string of business successes with Clemmons. When U.S. relations warmed with Cuba in 2014, Berenthal was waiting for the opportunity. “This project is a business, but it’s also a way to help get the Cuban people out of isolation. Forget government and politics. This is about getting two peoples together and providing a chance for farmers.”

A Reborn Allis-Chalmers Model G

Clemmons, with a farming background from childhood, took Berenthal’s vision and found a machinery fit in the expired patent design of an Allis-Chalmers Model G . Introduced in the 1940s, the G was designed with rear motor placement to provide open visibility. (It looks like a dune buggy or oversized go-kart.) Clemmons boosted the engine technology, changed the transmission, added independent hydrostatic drive transaxles, and upgraded to a category 1 3-point hitch. The model is titled Oggun, the god of metal from Cuba’s Santeria religion.

Cleber has applied for an Oggun patent in order to issue it for free. “This is going to be open-sourced and parts are going to be open to the shelf,” Clemmons says. “We designed the frame so that it can be changed into a skidsteer, excavator, trencher or anything you want. Put tines on and make it a plow or cultivator. The whole point is to keep costs as low as possible and make sure repairs are simple.”

Oggun parts will be made in Alabama and assembled in a Cleber factory at the Cuban port of Mariel. Each Oggun will cost $8,000 to $10,000, an affordable price even for Cuban farmers, according to Berenthal. “The farmers themselves tell us the Oggun is affordable. On the economic scale, Cuban farmers are in the upper middle-class. Plus, relatives in the U.S. will account for remittances, and the government has financing capabilities.”

Farming in Cuba

Approximately 300,000 farmers operate in Cuba, according to Clemmons. The government owns all farmland, but cultivates only 30%. Small farmers work the other 70% in 40- to 60-acre sections. Their crop majority must be sold at government-established prices, but they are permitted to keep 20% to 30% for open market sales. Tourism is creating huge demand and bringing strong prices for produce.

Clemmons hopes to manufacture 1000 Oggun tractors in 2017 and ramp up to 16,000 per year at the Mariel factory. Beyond Cuba, he believes the Oggun will find waiting markets in Latin America, Africa and Asia. “Farmers are desperate for a dependable, affordable tractor,” he explains. “We let countries build economies around Oggun distribution, repair and parts businesses.”

Berenthal and Clemmons are reaching for the opposite of obsolescence. Simple, fixable, dependable and affordable. Why did the Cuban government look past a long line of shiny suitors and give Berenthal and Clemmons the first nod of approval? “We didn’t just offer something to sell like every other company. We offered a real means to build something for people over the long term,” Clemmons says.

Agriculture is a universal language understood by farmers irrespective of country or creed. “We’re the first into Cuba,” Clemmons adds. “My partner Saul is walking on the edge of history and I’m enjoying the journey.”

Cuban Barriers May Hinder Trade, Investment: ITC Report

Thu, 19 Nov 2020 03:58:01 GMT

International Trade Commission report requested by Senate Finance panel

NOTE: This column is copyrighted material; therefore reproduction or retransmission is prohibited under U.S. copyright laws.

Barriers linked with Cuba’s state-controlled economy may make it hard for foreign partners to trade or invest in the country, but the lifting of restrictions could expand US exports, especially US farm products, the International Trade Commission (ITC) said in a report released Apr. 18. Link to report.

The report, requested by the Senate Finance Committee, will likely be an important tool as the Obama administration continues to call for an end to the decades-old US trade embargo on Cuba.

US sanctions on Cuba have “largely prevented” US companies and investors from entering the Cuban market, the report said. If US restrictions are lifted, US exports could be expanded, but “Cuban nontariff measures, institutional and infrastructural factors, and other barriers, including those associated with a non-market, state-controlled economy, still exist and may affect the ability of foreign partners to trade with or invest in the country,” according to the ITC.

US agricultural exports to Cuba could see significant gains from the removal of US trade restrictions, the ITC said.

“For manufactured goods,” the agency said, “exports would likely increase somewhat after the removal of US restrictions, with prospects for larger increases in the longer term, subject to changes in Cuban policy and economic growth.” Cuba imports many of the manufactured items it once produced. The US can ship most items at a lower cost than competitors, the ITC said. US services exports probably wouldn’t grow significantly in the near term, but could increase over a longer time span, the agency said.

Factors that could hinder US trade and investment include the Cuban government’s control of trade and distribution, limits on foreign investment and property ownership, dual currency and exchange rate systems, as well as politically motivated decisions. Customs duties and procedures and sanitary and phytosanitary measures on agricultural imports don’t appear to significantly affect trade, according to the ITC.

Background. Cuba ranked as the seventh-largest US export market before the US imposed restrictions. In 2014, Cuba was the 125th-largest US market, with US exports to Cuba reaching $299 million, according to the report.

Note: There are several interesting tables on Cuba agricultural trade over the years, as well as the estimated effect on exports of eliminating U.S. export financing and travel restrictions to Cuba on agricultural exports, by state. There are also comments on individual ag commodities.

NOTE: This column is copyrighted material; therefore reproduction or retransmission is prohibited under U.S. copyright laws.

From Milk to Lightbulbs, Fidel Castro Reshaped Life in Cuba

Tue, 17 Nov 2020 05:14:40 GMT

Fidel Castro changed the flavor of the milk Cuban children drink at breakfast.

He filled Cuban kitchens with energy-saving rice cookers, and he gave a two-hour lesson in their use live on national television. He even changed the nation’s lightbulbs, launching a nationwide campaign to replace incandescent bulbs with fluorescents that cast a pallid white light in Cuban homes to this day.

Castro, who died Friday night at 90, gained global stature with grand visions: confronting the United States; building universal health care and education; sending Cuba’s doctors to heal the Third World’s sick and its soldiers to fight alongside socialist allies from Vietnam to Angola.

At home, he expended vast quantities of time and energy remaking the minutest aspects of life in the country he ruled for nearly 50 years. Obsessive, restless, fixated on details, Castro is being remembered by many Cubans for his decades of smaller-scale, often quixotic initiatives to implant Soviet-style central planning on an unruly and improvisational Caribbean island.

Ten years after Castro turned power over to his brother Raul, the artifacts of his time in command still feature in the daily lives of average Cubans, particularly those related to Castro’s passions for agricultural productivity and energy-saving. Millions of Cubans still depend on the pale-blue ration book that once provided a month’s worth of free food, reduced today to about 15 days of rice, beans, eggs, chicken, cooking oil, salt and sugar.

In November 2005, Castro tried to persuade his countrymen to also feed their children “chocolatin,” a mix of powdered milk and cocoa distributed to families in 200-gram (seven-ounce) bags.

“Seven of every 11 grams are whole milk powder, believe me,” he said. “Check it if you’re skeptical. Take it to a laboratory and test it. There’s also four grams of cocoa, which is very strong, as strong as it is healthy. I know that our doctors over there in the mountains of Kashmir are drinking their chocolate every night.”

To this day, it’s hard to find a Cuban child who doesn’t ask for chocolate-flavored morning milk, itself a legacy of Castro’s pledge to give every Cuban under age 7 one liter of milk every day.

In 1961, two years after Castro’s revolution won power, the new Cuban government launched an ambitious campaign to stamp out illiteracy. Some 250,000 volunteer teachers, many of them young women, fanned out across the country, especially in rural areas where access to education was spotty and the need was greatest. In the space of a year, about 700,000 people learned to read and write, said “Maestra,” a documentary that explores the initiative’s history. Today, Cuba reports a literacy rate of 99.8 percent, on par with the most developed nations in the world.

In 1960, Castro launched the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution, neighborhood watch groups given the job of implementing social welfare projects and natural disaster assistance, looking out for the elderly and organizing modest block parties. They also serve as the government’s eyes and ears, networks of informants that enforce compliance and watch for suspicious activity such as political dissidence or an illegal satellite hookup. The committees are so ubiquitous that just about everyone in Cuba, especially in the cities, still lives within sight of the home of a committee member.

In 1985, many Cubans stopped smoking when Castro abandoned his ubiquitous cigars as part of a nationwide campaign against tobacco, which remains one of the island’s principal exports.

Some Cubans fondly remember his personal involvement in the daily problems of individual citizens, while others say he created a leader-dependent autocracy that remains virtually immobile without direct commands from the president.

“A friend of mine solved her housing problem when she got Fidel’s response to her letter seeking help,” said Elisa Marquez, a 54-year-old state human resources manager. “With his signature on the letter, it got fixed.”

In 2005, Castro’s government decided as part of its “energy revolution” that the incandescent light bulb’s time was up. Workers went door-to-door across the country as people handed over old 60-watt bulbs and were given energy-efficient replacements in the 5- to 18-watt range, with the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution helping keep track of those who complied. The switch is still evident today in millions of dimly lit homes, stores and offices. Some people have complained that the light is barely enough to read by or for kids to do homework after nightfall.

In March 2005, Castro stunned islanders with the sudden announcement that the government would hand out 100,000 new pressure cookers each month until some 2.5 million were distributed in all — and that still more would then be made available at subsidized prices, along with Chinese-made rice cookers. The move “will do away with the rustic kitchen,” Castro said in remarks to the Federation of Cuban Women.

Today the pressurized appliances remain a fixture in households everywhere.