Liberal Arts Graduates teaching Cameroonian farmers how to farm?

An Op-Ed piece in yesterday’s NY Times by the former country director of Cameroon brings into question the usefulness of sending recent college graduates overseas to help people that probably don’t need any of their help.

Robert Strauss writes:

In Cameroon, we had many volunteers sent to serve in the agriculture program whose only experience was puttering around in their mom and dad’s backyard during high school. I wrote to our headquarters in Washington to ask if anyone had considered how an American farmer would feel if a fresh-out-of-college Cameroonian with a liberal arts degree who had occasionally visited Grandma’s cassava plot were sent to Iowa to consult on pig-raising techniques learned in a three-month crash course. I’m pretty sure the American farmer would see it as a publicity stunt and a bunch of hooey, but I never heard back from headquarters.