Statement by the President on the Work of the Agricultural Advisory Corps in Vietnam With Text of His Letter to the First Eight Volunteers.
THESE MEN will work to help carry out our pledge to provide American technical and practical aid to the Vietnamese in their second-front war on hunger, poverty, illness, illiteracy, and injustice.
All of us can take heart from the fact that Vietnamese people in the provinces and villages are eager to build schools for their children, improve health facilities, modernize their farming methods, and to take further steps toward land reform.
I am grateful, and I know that my fellow Americans and the South Vietnamese are grateful, to these agricultural leaders who are volunteering to work in the fields and villages to help the Vietnamese build a productive agriculture.
THE PRESIDENT'S LETTER
Dear___________:
I am pleased that you have volunteered to help the people of South Vietnam.
You and seven other young men are a new kind of pioneer. As on-the-farm advisers to Vietnamese peasants and agricultural workers, you will play an indispensable role in carrying out your country's pledge of aid to Vietnam in a second-front war on hunger and poverty.
I am hopeful and confident that others, encouraged by your example, will want to become one of you.
The Vietnamese people in the provinces and villages are eager to modernize their farming methods, to speed up land reform, to build schools for their children, and to improve health facilities. They need advice and assistance. You and your colleagues will help them to adapt and learn to use U.S. technical and practical farming knowledge and to obtain the supplies and services they need.
Your work and that of other Americans in the villages and on the farms can contribute in an important way to shortening the war and saving the lives and resources of both Americans and Vietnamese.
I extend my personal commendation for your bold and patriotic desire to help a courageous people struggling for freedom and human dignity.
Sincerely,
LYNDON B. JOHNSON
Note: The President's statement and letter were made public as part of a White House release listing the names of the first eight young agricultural workers who had volunteered to teach American skills to the farmers of Vietnam. The men were selected by the Federal and State Cooperative Extension Services, acting on recommendations of Secretary of Agriculture Orville L. Freeman and agricultural leaders following their February mission to South Vietnam to study and advise on farm problems (Item 56). The release stated that the men would undergo 6 months of extensive training in the language and culture of South Vietnam and in tropical agriculture before being assigned about February 1, 1967, to work from 18 to 24 months alongside Vietnamese leaders in secured provinces. Their names follow: Allen C. Bjergo, county extension agent, Whitehall, Mont.; Noble E. Dean, county extension agent, Kalispell, Mont.; Arthur L. Gehlbach, assistant county extension agent, Bloomington, Ind.; Robert H. Dodd, county agricultural agent, Fonda, N.Y.; James S. Holderness, agricultural editor, College of Agriculture, University of Idaho, Moscow, Idaho; Dennis K. Sellers, director, Community Action Program, area of four counties, Levering, Mich.; William E. Schumacher, cooperative extension agent, Catskill, N.Y.; Charles E. Wissenbach, county extension agent leader for 4-H Clubs, Haydenville, Mass.
The release noted that an additional group of 15 volunteers would begin similar training in October.
Lyndon B. Johnson, Statement by the President on the Work of the Agricultural Advisory Corps in Vietnam With Text of His Letter to the First Eight Volunteers. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/238438