Announcement of the Formation and Membership of the Presidential Task Force to Honduras

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 economies 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.