BY: CAPITOL HILL CUBANS
Please read the following from the BBC:
US urged to stop Haiti rice subsidies
Cheap imported rice discourages farmers from growing their own, says Oxfam
A leading aid agency has called on the United States to stop subsidizing American rice exports to Haiti, the poorest country in the western hemisphere, because it says the policy undermines local production of food.
Former US President Bill Clinton, one of the architects of the subsidies to US farmers - and who is now, paradoxically, the co-chair of Haiti's earthquake recovery Commission - is quoted by Oxfam as saying that the policy was "a mistake".
"It may have been good for some of my farmers in Arkansas, but it has not worked," said Mr. Clinton, a frequent visitor to Haiti.
"I have to live every day with the consequences of the lost capacity to produce a rice crop in Haiti to feed those people, because of what I did."
In 2001, the Bush Administration adopted a similar policy towards Cuba pursuant to Hurricane Michelle hitting the island, which led to the first authorized U.S. agricultural sales to the Castro regime.
While the Trade Sanctions Reform Act had legalized agricultural sales to Cuba in 2000, the Castro regime's food monopoly had -- thus far -- refused to make any purchases because the law also barred U.S. government or private financing for such sales.
But then, a delegation from USA Rice traveled to Cuba and the Castro regime quickly learned about the farm lobby's power in the U.S. Congress.
At that very moment -- an unlikely alliance was born.
And the rest is history.
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