Bulgaria threw over its old communist government as other Eastern European nations did in the late 1980s. But successive governments failed to refashion the country's economy. Old-style farm cooperatives have not been replaced by modern farms. Three-fourths of Bulgaria's 8.2 million people live in poverty. Many of Bulgaria's older people have especially suffered in recent years.
Young people have trouble finding jobs, even with university degrees in hand.
So thousands of Bulgarians welcomed the potatoes, which were sold for the equivalent of about five cents a pound. Southern Baptist missionary Paul Ridgway requested the grant money from the International Mission Board's hunger relief funds, given by Southern Baptists across the United States to fight hunger and meet human needs around the world. But Ridgway credits Bulgarian Baptist Stefan Neikov for the potato project. Neikov is a retired Bulgarian army colonel who once taught at the military academy at Pleven. Neikov secured unused public farmland owned by the town of Gulyantsi and began rallying support for a potato project that would help feed the hungry.