Greg Rau is working from daylight to past dark preparing for harvest, but he's making time to show Russian President Boris Yeltsin around his 2,000-acre farm.
"It's an honor and something you can't turn down. There's no doubt about it," he said.Yeltsin is scheduled to spend about five hours in the Wichita area Thursday, nearly two hours of it at Rau's farm, as part of a goodwill mission to the United States and Canada.
That means Rau, 46, a third-generation Sedgwick County farmer, will take a break from readying his equipment for harvest. Cool, wet weather has delayed bringing in his wheat and kept him from preparing other fields for soybeans and grain sorghum.
Yeltsin has asked to meet privately with Rau, his wife, Sandy, and his children before attending a cookout in Rau's machine shed. Yeltsin also plans to tour a meat processing plant in Wichita.
Sen. Bob Dole, R-Kan., invited Yeltsin to the state, saying he wanted to give him the chance to see more of the United States than just Washington, where President Bush will host Yeltsin.
Yeltsin, 61, will be the highest ranking foreign head of state to visit Kansas this century. A Russian grand duke came to Kansas in 1872 to go buffalo hunting, Dole said.
Yeltsin will be in Washington from Monday until Thursday, when he will leave for Kansas. His next scheduled stop is Ottawa, Ontario.
Yeltsin said last week that part of his message will be: "Let's be partners and end this era of confrontation."
The words sound good to Rau.
"I think it's in both of our best interests, theirs and ours, to work together, to get along together, to trade together," Rau said.
American experts who have visited collective farms in the Russian republic report agriculture there is about 75 years behind the United States. Last year, Russia lost 15 percent of its grain crops because they either rotted in the fields or weren't handled well en route to market.