HOW DO YOU get from a rice field in east Arkansas to Fidel Castro's dinner table? Ask David Hillman. After a four-day trip to Cuba that culminated in an all-night dinner party at the Palace of the Revolution, this rice farmer from Almyra, Arkansas (population 311), emerged with a revised analysis of Castro's politics: "Quite frankly, I'm not convinced that Castro is a communist. Perhaps opportunist would be a better definition of him," Mr. Hillman explains with a thick Southern drawl. "He'll spout all that communism, but somehow or other I kind of felt he was something like Rush Limbaugh -- he says all that stuff, but does he really believe it? Or is he just trying to bait you?"

Mr. Hillman is the president of the 216,000-member Arkansas Farm Bureau. His visit to Cuba was part of an intensive diplomatic and lobbying effort by the agriculture industry over the last two years to end the agricultural embargo against Cuba. Yesterday, partly as a result of efforts like these, legislation went into effect that allows the sale of food and medicine to Cuba, legally opening trade routes between the two countries for the first time in forty years. Behind the farmers' diplomatic maneuvers lie the politics of survival: without the opening of new markets like Cuba, family farming -- and the people who depend on it -- runs the risk of extinction.

This is the third year in a downturn in the farm economy, with American agriculture in crisis as commodity prices steadily decline and expenses increase; not since the Great Depression have farmers been in such need of new markets. "It's bad, bad times," Arkansas rice farmer John Andrews explains. "It's put the weak farmers out. And it's put some farmers out who weren't weak. They've gone broke. All the people who were stable and could see the situation for what it is, they just quit."

Without federal emergency-aid payments, many of the farmers who have weathered the markets of the past few years would not have survived. Understandably, it is a situation that they find uncomfortable. "Farmers don't want to rely on the goodwill of Congress, because next year it may not be so good," commented a Farm Bureau staffer. But the farmers' dissatisfaction goes further than concerns over Congress's fickle favor -- and that's where the embargoes come in. "We don't like having to depend on the government for a living, and we wouldn't do it if we could get a decent price," explains Jack Carey, another Arkansas farmer, "but what has happened to us for years and years is that agriculture is a tool that's used for the embargoes. Because when we say 'We don't trade with that country,' what don't we trade with them? Agricultural products."

Arkansas farmers in particular have reason to want to cozy up to Cuba. The state grows half of all the rice produced in the United States. Before Castro's takeover, Cuba was Arkansas's biggest rice customer. That past has not been forgotten in Cuba; several Cubans the farmers encountered even remembered the brand name of their favorite Arkansas rice: Uncle Ben's. Over the forty years of the embargo, Cuba has imported 8.5 million metric tons of rice, equivalent to $3.1 billion paid to non-U.S. sources. Richard Bell of Riceland Foods, Arkansas's largest rice cooperative, says that the annual value of present-day Cuban rice imports would range between $130 million and $175 million. The numbers may seem small, but if the American rice industry were to bag this market, it would translate into twenty percent of the United States' total annual exports of rice. Because of the logistical factors in its favor, much of that would come from Arkansas. The Cuban market could easily absorb Arkansas's entire annual rice surplus of 300,000 metric tons.

While Arkansas's case is particularly dramatic, farm bureaus all over the country have long been clamoring for an end to the embargo. The American Farm Bureau Association, which represents approximately five million family farms, and to which the Arkansas Farm Bureau belongs, has always had a policy of opposition to unilateral embargoes, with the argument that it hurts the wrong people: the farmers at home, and the normal citizen -- not the government -- in the target countries. The numbers bear this latter assertion out. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the daily caloric intake in Cuba is estimated to have fallen from the 1980s' average of 2,908 calories to less than 1,900 calories in the early 1990s. This already comes in below the USDA-recommended minimum of approximately 2,200 calories a day, yet certain segments of the population, such as the elderly, may have suffered even more.

In theory, the legislation that took effect yesterday should mean that the agricultural lobby's logic had triumphed. However, prompted by anti-Castro representatives from Florida, the Republican leadership added last-minute restrictions that bar U.S. institutions from financing transactions between the two countries, requiring Cuba to either pay cash or obtain financing from a third country -- neither of which is likely to happen. The added clauses also make the travel restrictions to Cuba a law, while before they were only policy. With these late developments in the passage of the legislation, the farmers saw their victory bled of any real significance.

Indeed, Castro's reaction suggests there'll be little opportunity for actual trade as yet. He has repeatedly said that Cuba refuses to consider buying from the American farmers under the weakened legislation, calling it "discriminatory and humiliating," and insists on the dismantling of the entire embargo. Even offers of aid in obtaining outside financing fell on deaf ears; the embargo has long been a useful justification for Cuba's woes, and Castro may not be willing to let go of such a convenient scapegoat prematurely. For its part, the Bush administration insists that it will not loosen the embargo any further as long as Castro is in power. During confirmation hearings, new Secretary of State Colin Powell expressed his support for the sanctions, describing Castro as "an aging starlet who will not change in this lifetime."

Despite the name-calling and suspicion on both sides, another round of anti-embargo legislation is already making its way through Congress, backed by a bipartisan alliance that dips into even the ultra-conservative bastions of Congress -- it once counted Attorney General John Ashcroft among its leaders. For all the political obstacles, there's a feeling among many involved that the end of the embargo is merely a matter of time. David Hillman's gift to Castro was a clock, and an assurance: "This is to mark the time in hours before we can trade with you."