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It would be a grave error for any authority, either domestic or 

 foreign, to presume that it is endowed with the wisdom to define 

 a "best" solution and attempt to impose that solution on NIS 

 agriculture. 



For about one year the U.S. has been providing technical assistance 

 to agriculture in several NIS countries, including Russia. Based 

 on this experience it is clear that the effectiveness of our 

 programs can be increased. 



* Link Technical Assistance And Access To Capital 



Clearly, tangible results could be increased several fold 

 if technical assistance can in some manner be linked with 

 access to capital. Under the farmer-to-farmer program 

 senior persons, experienced and successful in U.S. 

 agriculture, go to the NIS to provide technical advice 

 and counsel to their counterparts. It has been 

 relatively easy to find promising groups of private 

 farmers to counsel. They are organized, well led, and 

 have well-defined goals. Typical projects of interest 

 are small processing plants, feed mills, and marketing 

 cooperatives all of which would compete with state 

 monopolies (or their privatized successors) . 



The problem is that technical assistance alone is not 



