Grapes for Afghanistan

Wines & Vines, Sept, 2004 by Larry Luxner

When most Americans think about Afghanistan--if they think about it at all--starving children, bombed-out villages and turbaned Islamic jihadists usually come to mind. What they don't think about are grapes, even though Afghanistan was once among the world's most important exporters of grapes and raisins.

Since 1997, Gary and Heidi Kuhn have been trying to revive that war-ravaged industry through their nonprofit organization, Roots for Peace. Heidi Kuhn, an ebullient 47-year-old mother of four, started the organization shortly after the death of Princess Diana, the world's best-known advocate of landmine removal.

"This whole thing began in the living room of our home in 1997, with a toast that the world should go from mines to vines," recalled Kuhn, a fifth-generation Californian whose ancestors were among the early pioneers of Marin County. "This issue deeply touched my heart, and I thought of my own backyard--all the vintners to the north and the high-tech companies to the south. The very next day, I got to work on it. In a sense, it was an epiphany of sorts, turning killing fields into vineyards."

In May, that effort got a major boost with a $10 million grant from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). The money, which comes from USAID's Rebuilding Agricultural Markets in Afghanistan Program, will go to Roots of Peace and a consortium of partners, including UC Davis, to fund the restoration of grape and raisin vineyards in areas of Afghanistan once riddled with landmines.

Afghanistan's ambassador in Washington, Said Tayeb Jawad, presided over a May 13 embassy reception honoring Roots of Peace. "Roots of Peace is reviving the tradition of grapegrowing, a cultural legacy of Afghanistan which goes back almost 5,000 years," Jawad told Wines & Vines. "This will not only have an economic impact, but also create job opportunities which will help disarm, demobilize and reintegrate the former militants."

The USAID contract includes $6 million in federal funds and $4 million in matching grants. UC Davis will receive $870,000 for a variety of activities including training, establishment of vineyard nurseries and the development of marketing centers. "What we're doing in this project is taking all this information that's been collected and using it to rebuild the extension system in Afghanistan," said Patrick Brown, director of the international programs office at the university's College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences. "The idea is to bring a group of 40 or so Afghan extensionists who will serve to guide the redevelopment of the industry."

In the 1970s, before the Soviets forcibly occupied Afghanistan, the country was a regional leader in table grapes and raisins. Its 80,000 hectares (1 hectare = 2.47 acres) of vines brought in export revenues of $48 million a year; most of the grape crop was exported to neighboring India and Pakistan, with a sizeable amount going to Dubai for sale throughout the Arab world. The domestic market was worth around $33 million.

After 1976, and especially after Soviet troops invaded the country in 1979, exports dropped off sharply, and by 1997, says the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, the area of actively managed vineyards had dropped by 45%.

The Roots of Peace project will focus on the provinces of Ghanzi, Kandahar and Parwan, said Brown, noting that fruits and nuts--mainly table grapes--account for 60% of Afghanistan's legal exports. "Several important cultivars in California, including Thompson Seedless and Red Globe, have Afghan parentage," Brown said. "In fact, Afghanistan has over 70 varieties of raisin grapes and a tremendous variety of interesting cultivars. In the 1930s and '40s, Dr. Harold Olmo explored Afghanistan to collect native varieties of grapes and other fruits, and it was he who brought much of those materials to California."

Gary Kuhn, a former IBM executive, said the project will soon airlift 4,000 cuttings of 60 different grape varieties to Afghanistan, and will send a second shipment of 40 varieties in the spring. The idea is to repatriate the Afghan varietals back into Afghanistan while introducing new commercial varieties. "Afghanistan's table grapes are now mostly for local consumption," he said, "and for export just across the border to Pakistan, Iran and Tajikistan. They're getting extremely low prices, and what we want to do is help them get back into the Dubai market, which is the hub for fruits throughout the Middle East."

Brown noted that as late as the 1970s, Afghanistan had a very good agricultural extension system, largely built by the Americans. "Because they were previously quite prominent in table grapes, and because raisins are a big part of their culture, they're very enthusiastic about renewing the industry," he said.

In addition to Brown, the UC Davis team is composed of program coordinator Farbod Youssefi and training coordinator Todd Rosenstock. Assisting them will be members of the university's departments of pomology, viticulture and enology, the Foundation Plant Service and the USDA's Germplasm Repository.