On January 16, 2015, the U.S. government published amended rules to the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) Cuban Assets Control Regulations which read as follows: Persons subject to U.S. jurisdiction are authorized to engage in all transactions, including payments, necessary to import [into the United States] certain goods and services produced […]
Cuba’s Evolving Agricultural Import Patterns
In the spring of 2014, a series of news articles appeared indicating that U.S. food and agricultural exports to Cuba continued to plummet (“continuaron en picada”) (Café Fuerte; Cuba Standard; and Economic Eye on Cuba). Their evidence for this assessment was that the value of U.S. food and agricultural exports to Cuba in 2013 was […]
U.S. Food and Agricultural Exports to Cuba: Progress, Problems and Prospects
The theme of this year’s ASCE meetings, Where is Cuba Going?, asks a question that is very much on the minds of U.S. exporters of food and agricultural (F&A) products. Based on recent developments, there does not seem to be a clear answer to this question. After importing over $700 million worth of F&A products […]
The 2008 Hurricane Season and its Impact on Cuban Agriculture and Trade
In 2008 Cuba experienced its most destructive hurricane season in recorded history. Three major hurricanes and a tropical storm impacted the island in less than a month early in the season, and another hurricane raked across the island later in the season. This paper summarizes information published in an earlier report on the damages to […]
Farm Household Livelihood Strategies: Preliminary Findings of a Case Study of Fifteen Households with Limited Resources in the Sierra del Rosario of Western Cuba
Small-scale, tropical agricultural systems worldwide are often subsistence-oriented, resource-limited, and typically integrate multiple crops and livestock to form complex systems of biological diversity. Underlying these similarities are dynamic interrelationships between humans and the biophysical environment. As dynamic systems, they are subject to perturbation and change. This study of such a system in western Cuba presents […]