230 



has characterized the rural to urban migrants in the West Euro- 

 pean and North American tradition. 



We're Hving off of that tradition today in this country, with a 

 much stronger representation on behalf of agriculture because of 

 nostalgia by people who no longer live in the rural countryside, no 

 longer work in agriculture, but still will support a farm program. 

 That kind of strength, I believe, is not as apparent in the states 

 of the former Soviet Union. 



Mr. Lewis. Thank you. Dr. Raup. 



Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 



Mr. Penny. Mr. Baesler. 



Mr. Baesler. I noticed in your written comments regarding the 

 enterprise fund that your point was that we need to do less on edu- 

 cating themselves and put more money into the actual operation 

 within Russia. I think your second point was that it might prove 

 dividends to us if we took, from a Government standpoint, a more 

 aggressive approach in assisting our folks here who might want to 

 export whatever they want to export to Russia and let those pri- 

 vate individuals help us solve the problem, with us supporting 

 them, and at the same time they would receive benefits that would 

 be realized for us here. Is that generally what you mean by that? 



Ms. Brookins. You said it better than I wrote it, sir. I think that 

 is true. We have very limited resources in terms of our foreign as- 

 sistance. I think that's something we're all very aware of, and I 

 think that President Clinton has also emphasized the importance 

 of the private-public partnership. Here we are going into the 

 former Soviet Union, into a country that was a totalitarian, 

 nonmarket economy, and if everything we try to do is government- 

 government and sending aid people over there and not really get- 

 ting our businesses over there, I think we'll be making a serious 

 mistake. 



I think where you have this tjrpe of political and economic uncer- 

 tainty and insecurity, sometimes it can make the difference be- 

 tween a business making an investment or doing work in a coun- 

 try, knowing that it has an OPIC investment guarantee, knowing 

 that it has Ex-Im credit guarantees, knowing it has GSM program 

 money or some other t5T)es of money. 



An enterprise fund concept specifically for agribusiness I think 

 could be very useful. Europeans are notorious, the Japanese are no- 

 torious—all the assistance they ever provide is really to move their 

 products into a market or give their businesses the opportunity to 

 get a toehold in that market, and what we've found is if you don't 

 get in at the ground floor, you lose out forever. Because once you 

 get in at the ground floor, you build those relationships, you get 

 your technology in there, you get your commodities in there, and 

 it builds a long-time multiplier effect into trade and economic bene- 

 fits to a country. So that is why I'm saying we need to be 

 leveraging the small amount of money we have and using it more 

 efficiently. 



Mr. Baesler. So would your conclusion be, if you had $100 bil- 

 lion or million or whatever kind of dollars you want to talk about, 

 that if that was going to be the amount of money we're out here 

 talking about to provide assistance to Russia, then the question is 

 whether or not that $100 billion would be leveraged to more benefit 



