Swords & Plowshares

National Guard, Dec 2007 by Jensen, Ron

Pilot program will enlist Missouri National Guardsmen with agricultural backgrounds to help farmers in Afghanistan

Some Missouri Army National Guardsmen with agriculture backgrounds are hoping to pull the farm economy of Afghanistan from its decades-old rut.

Capt. Doug Dunlap, executive director of the newly-formed Agri-business Development Team (ADT), says about 50 Show Me State Guardsmen should be on the ground in Afghanistan as part of the pilot program early next year.

They will follow an advance already in place and assist farmers in eastern Afghanistan's Nangarhar Province with everything from irrigation and storage of crops to fertilizer use and the slaughtering of livestock.

"Their lives probably haven't changed much in a couple hundred years," Dunlap says of the farmers who grow a variety of crops in tiny fields along the Kabul River. "They're very dependent on manual labor."

Tractors are rare. Open ditches carry water for irrigation. Livestock is slaughtered on a dirt lot with no sanitation. The lack of cold storage means farmers are unable to hold onto crops and sell them when prices might be better.

"There's a huge glut on the market for a few weeks," keeping prices low, says Dunlap, a farm boy who graduated from the University of Missouri and is in the agricultural finance industry.

Much of the crop rots in the field, he says, because there is no market beyond local villagers and across the nearby border with Pakistan.

To solve these problems, the ADT program was created. Simple fixes can be a boost to the local economy, which, Dunlap says, could be the exit strategy for the U.S. military in Afghanistan.

Roughly 45 percent of the country's gross domestic product comes from agriculture and 70 percent of the population is somehow dependent on agriculture for work, Dunlap says.

U.S. Rep. Ike Skelton, D-Mo., House Armed Services Committee chairman, supports the program.

"Revitalizing Afghanistan's agricultural sector is critical to efforts to stabilize the country," he said in a statement when the team was announced in the fall. "Work in this area is long overdue, and I am very hopeful that the Missouri National Guard's success will be used as a model for other [ADTs] throughout the country."

Lt. Gen. Clyde Vaughn, Army Guard director, says a second ADT from another state is already being prepped to enter another province.

"The value of this team . . . can not be overstated because what it represents is an enormous tool in the rucksack" of the United States, he says.

The ADT includes about 12 agriculture experts who are part-time Guardsmen. Some are from the academic world of agriculture. Others have agribusiness backgrounds. And others simply have "farmed their entire lives," Dunlap says.

Another 35 or so Guardsmen, many of them civilian farmers, will support the experts, he adds.

Dunlap says the team will develop its own efforts once it is on the ground, but it also plans to join programs created by agencies such as the U.S. Agency for International Development and others.

"There's a lot of work that's already been started," Dunlap says. "But they've got a limited number of agriculture personnel on the ground. I think the Guard is uniquely qualified to provide that personnel."

While in Afghanistan, the ADT will have access to the know-how of experts back in Missouri. People from the Farm Bureau, the University of Missouri, Lincoln University of Missouri and the College of the Ozarks will be available to add their expertise to the effort.

Dunlap is confident of success but he's quick to say the idea won't be a complete winner during the Missouri team's year-long stay.

"I think it's going to be hard to measure success in a 12-month period," he says.

But in three or four years, he believes, as more teams participate, the Guard's ADT innovation will be justified.

-By Ron Jensen