October 1, 1982
A U.S. Presidential Task Force to Honduras is scheduled to leave on October 2. Members of the
task force will spend 2 weeks in Honduras reviewing its agricultural sector and advising the
Government of Honduras on ways to improve its agricultural production and marketing
system.
The task force is being led by Richard O. Wheeler, president and chief executive officer of
Winrock International in Arkansas. Dr. Wheeler has taught agricultural economics at Montana
State University and Oregon State University. He has also been a private agribusiness
consultant.
This is the third Presidential agricultural task force to be sent to a developing country. Similar
task forces went to Peru and Thailand earlier. The teams were established by the U.S. Agency for
International Development (AID) at the direction of President Reagan, following the North-South
summit talks at Cancun, Mexico.
Other members of the task force are: Robert Chapman Phelps, president, Consolidated Land and
Livestock Co. of Nevada; Walter Minger, senior vice president for the Bank of America; Norman
Johnson, vice president of Weyerhaeuser Co.; Clarence A. Boonstra, investment consultant to
Weyerhaeuser Co.; Gerald Grant, office of international programs, Oklahoma State University; J.
B. Penn, economic consultant of Economic Perspectives, Inc.; Frederick Lee Mann, College of
Agriculture, University of Missouri at Columbia; and Arthur Lee Quinn, partner in the law firm of
Gadsby and Hannah, Washington, D.C.