128 



Mr. Penny. How does AKKOR provide credit? Where does 

 AKKOR get its financing? 



Ms. Cashman. It initially got first a credit bump fi*om the Min- 

 ister of -Agriculture — fi*om the Russian Ministry of Agriculture. But, 

 subsequently, they have involved themselves or engaged them- 

 selves in a number of other joint venture activities and are trying 

 to generate their own revenues to provide credit, but that is an on- 

 going problem. In fact, part of the butter monetization program ac- 

 tually would be to provide credit. 



Mr. Penny. Through AKKOR to its member 



Ms. Cashman. But it would not be AKKOR Moscow, it would be 

 AKKOR, say, Venev or AKKOR Knitche. It would be at the local 

 level versus the Federal level. 



Mr. Joseph. That would be very helpful. 



Mr. Johnson. I would suggest that we use AKKOR, and we use 

 their bureaucracy, and we use them for what bureaucracies are 

 good for. They are good for communication and other kinds of link- 

 ages, but they are terrible as business partners. 



Thus, we should use them to make contacts with the local people 

 and firms, £uid then, once we have achieved the contacts, go with 

 the individual operators. This two-step process can work very well. 

 And it is easy to bait, if you pardon the expression, AKKOR into 

 participation because you can use them to organize seminars and 

 meetings that raise their level of visibility within the Russian 

 farming community. 



Ms. Cashman. Perhaps the single largest contribution that 

 AKKOR has to the private farmer is that it is actually able to en- 

 gage the Russian Government and focus — they are able to mobilize 

 the attention of the Russian Government on the plight of the peas- 

 ant farmer. And, quite fi*ankly, without an organization like 

 AKKOR, I don't think you would have Yeltsin or Khlystun or some 

 of the others paying the kind of attention that currently is being 

 paid to peasant farming in Russia and the problems of peasant 

 farming if you didn't have a stronger voice that is represented by 

 AKKOR. 



Mr. Penny. Ms. McKinney. 



Ms. McKinney. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 



I would like to commend the members of the panel for wonder- 

 fully enlightened presentations. And I have just a question for Ms. 

 Cashman — two questions actually. It is nice to see a wom£in in a 

 position like that. 



Your farmer-to-farmer program, do you have it in other areas of 

 the world or is it specifically just for Russia? 



Ms. Cashman. Well, actually. Land O'Lakes has been an active 

 supporter of the VOCA and has actually done quite a bit of recruit- 

 ing in placement of its own members and employees within VOCA's 

 operations all around the world. 



However, if you think about Land O'Lakes' international develop- 

 ment commitment, we have been providing farmer-to-farmer assist- 

 ance without any kind of compensation from the U.S. Government, 

 just because of the commitment that we have to worldwide issues. 

 So even though — the answer is, yes, we do have a farmer-to-farmer 

 program in other countries, but it is not an official AID farmer-to- 

 farmer program. 



