By Rob Moritz
Arkansas News Bureau

LITTLE ROCK — Gov. Mike Beebe will travel to the Caribbean island of Cuba next week to promote the state’s agricultural interests.

The governor, Rep. Robert Moore, D-Arkansas City, Sen. Jim Luker, D-Wynne, and state Economic Development Director Maria Haley are scheduled to leave Tuesday and return Thursday, Beebe spokesman Matt DeCample said Friday.

“We will meet with trade officials and visit local markets that have sold or potentially could sell Arkansas farm products,” Beebe said in his weekly radio address.

Moore, who represents a region of southeastern Arkansas heavy with rice farms, said economic relations with Cuba could help the state’s economy.

“Opening up our trade relations with Cuba would certainly be a great market for our agriculture commodities,” Moore said. “It would be a boon for the economy.”

DeCample said Morril Harriman, the governor’s chief of staff, will travel with the governor on the trip being coordinated by Stuttgart-based Riceland Foods and Springdale-based Tyson Foods.

Cuba has been under a U.S. trade boycott since 1962. In 2000, exemptions were created to allow limited agriculture trade with the island and U.S. farmers have taken advantage of the new opportunity, including some in Arkansas.

Rice has been exported there for about a decade and Cuba is the sixth-largest importer of American poultry, according to the governor’s office.

“There are now indications that these trade embargoes may soon be eased further or lifted completely,” Beebe said. “I have no knowledge of the specific trade politics or timing of any such decision, and that is not the purpose of my trip. I am going to Cuba to ensure that, if and when agriculture trade is permitted, Arkansas will be in the best possible position to seize the opportunity to sell our products.”

Several members of the state’s congressional delegation have made similar trade trips to Cuba in recent years.