ACE Forges Five-Year Partnership with Russia

Fifteen months after taking the highly unusual step of signing an agreement between a professional organization (ACE) and a Ministry, an ACE delegation returned to Russia in June to assess progress made and chart a course for the next five years. Bob Furbee, ACE past president, Ken Kingsley and Eric Abbott, International SIG co-chair, traveled more than 1,200 miles in northern Russia to visit farms and extension offices, and to discuss agricultural communication with Russian ACE members and other leaders. The result is a proposed five-year extension for the agreement and six focus areas that include an agricultural communication summit for ACE members in Russia next spring.

It is a crucial time in Russia for agricultural communication. The five-year, $360 million World Bank ARIS (Agricultural Reform Implementation Support) project that created a new Press Video Center within the Ministry of Agriculture and an extension system with state and local area offices ended July 1. Following the economic crisis of October 1998 and the end of ARIS, communication and extension units have seen their budgets cut by 75 percent. Meanwhile, a new agriculture minister, A. Gardeev, has been selected, and his position has been elevated to vice premier. Russia’s newly elected president, Vladimir Putin, has announced a sweeping administrative reorganization that will create regions to coordinate and regulate activities, including agriculture, in Russia’s oblasts (states). Agricultural producers need good market and crop information more than ever, but mass media carry only limited information.

The Agreement

At a small rustic roadside restaurant halfway between St. Petersburg and Moscow, Russia’s ACE team, led by Press Video Center Director Vladislav Temnikov, and the U.S. ACE members finalized their proposed strategy during a two-hour traditional Russian dinner. Highlights of the strategy, which includes a general five-year agreement and a specific one-year plan, call for:

• A “summit” next spring that would take ACE members with interest and expertise to Russia. While there, members would tour national, regional and local agricultural communication and extension offices, and would meet mass media, as well as agricultural leaders. At each level, ACE members would share their ideas and learn from their Russian counterparts. The trip would increase understanding among ACE members about Russia and develop personal relationships that can lead to future exchanges and project development.
• Continued efforts to create a Russian ACE affiliate. Temnikov, who heads Russia’s current ACE affiliate organization, is interested in getting additional advice and assistance in setting up what can be a national professional agricultural communication organization in Russia. He emphasizes, however, that given Russia’s bureaucracy, there are many hurdles to overcome.
• Specific activities to develop projects for high priority areas, such as creation of a national rural youth organization in Russia, improving the country’s market information system, developing a “master gardener” system to improve practices of the millions of Russian gardeners that produce half of the country’s food, investigating the potential for an agricultural satellite TV channel and encouraging new private farmers to form “discussion clubs” to train each other. ACE would not develop these projects directly, but would help members broker development of these projects with their home institutions.

The proposed five-year accord and annex to the agreement were presented to the ACE board members at the USACC 2000 Congress. The board approved both. A team headed by Eric Abbott will coordinate the implementation. Other team members are Ken Kingsley, Eldon Fredericks, Terry Meisenbach and LaRue Pollard.

In addition to Temnikov’s leadership of ACE’s Russia affiliate, ACE now has three individual Russia members: Tatyana Ukhanova, deputy director of the Press Video Center, Victor Semenov, state communication director in Tula oblast, and Ivan Perov, who is coordinating the activities of a Canadian-funded rural communication initiative.

A Russian delegation headed by Temnikov, who is information adviser to Agriculture Minister and Vice Premier Gardeev, attended USACC 2000 to report on Russia’s agricultural communication activities and to officially sign the agreement. Also included in the delegation were Ukhanova, who first spoke to ACE at Asilomar in 1998, and Sergey Ipp, deputy director of the Press Video Center, who currently manages the video production and financial affairs of the center.

International Presence: The Author’s Perspective

For Bob Furbee, Ken Kingsley and myself, the importance of our Russia activity goes well beyond the excitement of learning about a new culture and the thrill of standing in the middle of Red Square on a summer evening. At issue is what it means to be an “international” organization. Many countries currently have agricultural communication systems that are very dynamic. These countries contain professionals who could greatly enhance the international membership of ACE. At the same time, the creativity of these international members can also provide lessons and ideas for U.S. members. Along the way, our partnerships with other countries and professionals will enhance the credibility of ACE as a spokesperson for agricultural communication, and will increase the stature of our profession with administrators.

Eric Abbott
Iowa State University

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