The meeting’s opening ceremony is held at Havana’s Hotel Nacional, declared a National Monument in 1998 and inscribed in the International Register of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Memory of the World since 2008.

The US agricultural sector “has always worked to find ways to break down walls,” President Miguel Diaz-Canel acknowledged, when he received in this capital in February 2024 a delegation from the neighboring country, consisting of secretaries of Agriculture of several states, among other executives.

Diaz-Canel said then that “if it were not for the blockade, we would have many mutual opportunities to work, to move forward for the benefit of both peoples.”

Cuba’s domestic market is by no means negligible, as the State tries to ensure the feeding of 11 million people, the president recalled.

In experts’ opinion, the activism of US farmers was essential so that the US Congress approved the Trade Sanction Reform and Export Enhancement Act in 2000, which allowed Cuba to purchase food there, although under unfavorable conditions imposed by anti-Cuban sectors.

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