Peace Corps Seeks Farmers for Africa Duty

The Peace Corps, in the biggest recruiting drive of its 24-year history, today asked for applications from 10,000 American agriculture workers and will send the best of them to Africa to fight famine.

Peace Corps Director Loret Miller Ruppe said the urgent appeal for volunteers is necessary to fill an immediate request from African countries for 600 agriculture workers and to create a pool of specialists to staff a 10-year Peace Corps program to improve African agriculture.

Ethiopia, where the famine has hit hardest, is not currently receiving Peace Corps volunteers. But Ruppe said 24 other countries, including 12 with food crises, urgently need volunteers.

“The current crisis in Africa represents an unparalleled challenge to the world,” Ruppe told a news conference.

The Peace Corps has made recruiting efforts in the past, but never before has it made an appeal so specialized. All the new volunteers will be farmers, farm machinery technicians, forestry workers, soil engineers and others in professions related to agriculture.

Ruppe said only “the best and the brightest” of the applicants would make the grade. Of the 160,000 job inquiries the Peace Corps received last year, about 15,000 led to applications and about 8,000 of those applications were seriously considered.

The first wave of 600 volunteers will be sent to Africa this spring and summer and the other successful applicants will be considered for assignments later, Ruppe said.

She said the Peace Corps is hoping to tap agricultural schools and agribusiness corporations.