Adaptation of a talk first given to a Roundtable on Agriculture Volyn Oblast State Administration June 5, 2008, Luts’k, Ukraine Thank you for having me here[i]. Agricultural management is a topic which is dear to my heart for several reasons. The good manager controls the land. The owner thinks he controls his land, but the [...]

Poverty does not cause crime or low test scores In our ongoing world financial crisis, Ukraine has fallen far further than any other country.  It’s currency has fallen 40% in the last year.  And it was the poorest in Europe before the crisis began.  Yet junior high girls can hitch hike to school totally safely.  [...]

Wild East of Europe It’s not the Europe most tourists see.  You can travel for hundreds of miles and barely see a gas station.  The countryside stretches green, lush and open.  Now and then a bit of plowed ground reveals the blackest soil you have ever seen.  Nick, my driver and translator, collected me in [...]

The country we all come from Most of us have been to a foreign country, even if it was just Memphis or Los Angeles.  But very few have been to the country where their ancestors grew up.   All our ancestors grew up in small rural villages where people grew nearly all their own food.   The [...]

Revitalize yourself in Volyn, Ukraine If you love Arkansas except for June to August, then you should spend the summer in the lakes, farms, woodlands and cities of Volyn Province in Ukraine.  The largest city is Lutsk, the capitol, with almost exactly the population of Little Rock.   All government and many commercial activities in Volyn [...]

Чи не перетвориться Україна на Кенію? Will not Ukraine be transformed into Kenya? Published June 29, 2008, in Luts’k (Ukraine) Daily News “Вісника і Ко” Американські аграрники в дикій українській природі бачать позитив American agrarian sees much to like in wild Ukrainian nature Нещодавно на Волині побував американець Джим Ворстелл, консультант з питань агробізнесу. Разом [...]