Good Fruit Grower

January 2017

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www.goodfruit.com GOOD FRUIT GROWER JANUARY 1, 2017 21 Politics and Cuba's own challenges make the island a distant prospect for tree fruit growers. story and photos by O. Casey Corr C uba has an outsized pres- ence in American culture. The reminders begin when you step off the airplane at Havana's José Martí International Airport. Blasted by hot, moist Caribbean air, you see things that are new and yet at the same time seem rooted in memory: Drivers of 1950s American cars beckon with a honk. That familiar portrait of Che Guevera, dashing in beret, looks skyward for his next revo- lution, or at least a place on somebody's T-shirt. Reaching Havana's downtown, you see waters that trigger thoughts about Cuba's shared history with the U.S.: the battleship USS Maine, the Bay of Pigs, the CIA's plots to kill Castro, and the famous Americans who drank and par- tied in Cuba, from Ernest Hemmingway and Meyer Lansky to Beyoncé and Jay-Z. Elegant mansions, most now pitted and crumbling from neglect, remind you of Cuba's past prosperity as the world leader in sugar production and its lucra- tive exports of rum, tobacco and nickel. But that prosperity, limited to Cuba's landed class, ended in 1959 when the late Fidel Castro took power, triggering hostility with the United States and dependency on subsidies from the Soviet Union. When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, so too did Cuba's economy. Without Soviet cash, Cuba could not afford to buy enough food for its people, nor could its inefficient state-owned farms grow enough food. Rationing began and hasn't ended. I went to Cuba last fall as part of a tour, sponsored by the American Association of Agricultural Editors, to assess the prospects for Pacific Northwest tree fruit growers. Our group came from publica- tions and organizations throughout the U.S., representing livestock and different crops. We met farmers, ministry officials, biotech researchers, importers and others. We wanted to learn about Cuba's agricul- ture, especially changes that began when the country's central planners decided to give their economic model an "update:" that is, allow free market forces to take hold in certain areas. The sense of change accelerated in 2014, when President Barack Obama took steps to normalize relations with Cuba. The election of chapter? new buildings that are noteworthy. Apart from some notable exceptions, this is a country where significant investment has been Continued on Page 25

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