Center For Citizen Initiatives
With the fall of the Iron Curtain and Communism, the Russian economy is having a difficult time adjusting to a free-market economy after years of financial neglect to fund the Communist military machine. The Russian people are struggling to grow enough food to feed their nation. This has been exacerbated by a cut in funds to co-op farms. The American chemical companies having been exerting intense pressure on the US Agency for International Development to purchase vast amounts of pesticides for the Russian farmers under the specious guise that these will solve the food problem. Thus far the US government has resisted. It is a long-known fact that pesticides do not decrease crop losses and really only benefit the chemical manufacturers while posing serious health concerns. The Center for Citizen Initiatives (CCI) with Sylvia and Walter Ehrhardt, former White House staff under Jimmy Carter, came up with an innovative approach: take the tried and tested organic farming techniques the Ehrhardts have used on their farm in the Blue Ridge Mountains and compile and translate these into Russian and give these to the Russian farmers. These techniques would allow the Russian farmers to increase their crop yields without expensive, dangerous pesticides. This is a unique opportunity to demonstrate on a global basis the cost-effectiveness of organic farming while dispelling the pesticide myth.