Ukrainians Get Taste of Area

BY AMY HIGGINS

The Cincinnati Enquirer
August 8, 1998

Vasyl Zaytsev said his country is in crisis. Because of Ukraine's difficult conversion from communism, food is expensive and his countrymen rely heavily on food from their own gardens.

But he hopes he can learn from Cincinnati. Mr. Zaytsev and 17 other entrepreneurs from Kharkiv, Ukraine, are touring area food processing plants and restaurants this month as part of an exchange program called the Marshall Plan Study Tour.

They have some of the best land in the world - they can grow any produce there, but they don't know how to market it and distribute it' said Lee Cole, president of the Center for Economic Initiatives, the Cincinnati-based non-profit group that organized the tour.

The tour is not only borrowing the name of the U.S. assistance program that helped rebuild Europe after World War II, but its getting help from a man who was involved in the original Marshall Plan.

James Silberman, who was chief of productivity and technology development at the Bureau of Labor Statistics after the war and was responsible for the productivity assistance program of the Marshall Plan, is now 84 years old and is touring with the Ukrainians.

Mr. Cole, active in the Cincinnati-Kharkiv sister city program, called Mr. Silberman after seeing an article he wrote called 'Jump Starting Ex-Commumst Economies" published in Foreign Affairs magazine. The article outlined how the Marshall Plan principles could be used to help former Soviet republics.

After the Soviet Union collapsed, U.S. officials helped with fiscal and monetary policy, expecting productivity and the rest of capitalism to follow, Mr. Silberman said. It hasn't.

"The Ukrainian standard of living is comparable to African communities it is so low," Mr. Silberman said.

On Friday, the group visited Husman Snack Foods Co., which produces potato chips and cheese popcorn in Over-the-Rhine; Nash Finch Co., a wholesale food distributor in Blue Ash; and the Dillonvale IGA store. It will visit other factories and companies in Kentucky, Indiana, Michigan and Illinois over the next 28 days. The tour is funded by a grant from the U.S. Agency for International Development

Larry Ruschman, director of sales at Hussman, said food processing is 40 years behind the American.  They're behind the eight ball" he said. "They've got a long way to go."

Mr. Zaytsev, who runs a fast-food restaurant that sells 50 different kinds of pancakes, said he doesn't yet know what methods he will take home. But he said he is glad Americans are taking his capitalist goals seriously.