04/09/07 Otter, delegation Cuba bound

Governor Butch Otter leads a trade delegation to Cuba beginning today. The Idaho group will be in Havana on Tuesday and Otter says it's a chance for this state to sell some of its agricultural products to Cuba. Syngenta Seed will send a representative, so will BYU-Idaho. OTTER "Dairy Gold is going down and so is the Idaho Dairymen's Association in cooperation with them, the Idaho Grain Growers and Farm Bureau, the Potato Commission, Idaho State University. The delegation will be in Cuba until Friday. Otter has made this trip before, three times to be exact. He's established some relationships with Cuba leaders that could be helpful. OTTER "The minister, the guy who buys everything down there, his name is Pedro Alvarez. I told him about our University of Idaho Forestry School. They've exchanged a lot of information and one of the people that I think are going at this time is a forester, a silverculturalist to take a look at their forests and see how they can get more production out of it." Despite a US trade embargo American farmers provide more food to Cuba than another other nation. Will Otter meet this week with an ailing Fidel Castro as he has done on previous trips? OTTER "Maybe show some folks around the world that he is healthy. For all the wrong reasons we might get a chance to see him." Today's Idaho Ag News Bill Scott