Alabama's Cuban exports last year totaled more than $100 million, Sparks said, adding that businesses just returned from Cuba with signed contracts for 2007.

Still, there are some signs that trade with Cuba has leveled off or could drop. Alimport has warned that uncertainty over Washington's regulations caused it to order more than $300 million in planned imports from the United States from other "reliable foreign markets that also extend credit." Alimport's President Pedro Alvarez has said, for example, that Cuba is shopping in Vietnam for rice.

Some U.S. companies have yet to receive orders for 2007.

TIGHTER RULES

In 2004, the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control tightened up the payment rules, demanding that U.S. companies receive cash before their shipments leave U.S. soil. Payments are made as letters of credit, which have to be cleared through four banks -- a Cuban bank, a European bank, the European bank's correspondent bank in the United States and the exporter's bank.

A single error or change in paperwork -- say because a ship is delayed -- means that all four banks must rewrite the letter of credit.

Kirby Jones, who represents a number of clients in Cuba through his Washington-based company Alamar Associates, predicted that any new attempts by Washington to complicate agricultural trade will steer more orders to other countries at a time when U.S. interest in trading with Cuba is growing.

"Every state is looking for export markets, " said Jones, who founded the U.S.-Cuba Trade Association in 2005 to promote trade with Cuba. "Many people know about trade with Cuba and a lot of people don't. When they find out, they say, 'We'd like to get in on this action.' "

Wright said food diplomacy still has room to grow. Cuba, he said, is set to import 2,000 portions of Brahman bull semen from Texas, and he plans to attend the March Agricultural Fair at the Boyeros Ranch outside Havana.

Despite current complications with Ag trade, he predicted: "This storm will pass. The island needs to eat."

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