Harvesting ties with Afghanistan

[unhappycamper]

Harvesting ties with Afghanistan
By Tom Vanden Brook - USA TODAY
Posted : Wednesday Dec 31, 2008 8:10:28 EST

BAGRAM AIR FIELD, Afghanistan — Growing up on a farm with no electricity or indoor plumbing in the rolling, wooded hills of southwestern Wisconsin may be the best training Col. Martin Leppert could have had for what he’s facing here.

Leppert leads the new National Guard program, spearheaded by farmer-soldiers from middle America, to teach Afghans how to bolster their yields from crops and livestock.

“I can appreciate what they’re going through,” he says. “I had a little Afghan experience in my own upbringing. It’s hard living.”

In Afghanistan, eight of 10 workers scratch a living from the bleak landscape. Just 12 percent of the land in a country about the size of Texas can support crops. Devastating droughts are common here; overgrazing has depleted pastures. Small improvements can help make farming more viable, Leppert says. They also can help wean some farmers off opium poppies, which feed the heroin trade and in turn nourish militants such as the Taliban.

The war in Afghanistan, says Anthony Cordesman, a military analyst with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, will be won in rural areas with programs like the Guard’s Agribusiness Development Team effort. Such aid will be as important as bullets, he says. Afghans won’t reject the fundamentalist Muslim Taliban and the narcotics trade until they feel more secure and see government efforts to improve their lives.


Rest of article at: http://www.armytimes.com/news/2008/12/gns_afghanistan_farming_123008/%2e