A Guest Blog By Captain Peter Shinn, of the Iowa National Guard's 734th Agri-Business Development Team
As the Iowa National Guard’s 734th Agri-Business Development Team makes final preparations before deployment to Afghanistan’s Kunar Province, it seems worthwhile to take stock of some of the basic challenges facing the ADT, which aims to protect the people of Afghanistan by improving the ability of the Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan to feed its citizens.
The simple fact is that Afghanistan is extremely underdeveloped. A country profile produced by the Library of Congress in August 2008 describes well the issues facing the people of Afghanistan, and those who want to help them. Literacy rates are low. Four years ago, less than half the men and little more than 10% of women in Afghanistan could read and write. While that figure has certainly improved since then, it’s a given that some, and perhaps most, of the Afghan farmers we plan to reach out to will be unable to utilize written ag-education materials.
Progress on rebuilding Afghanistan’s university system has been slow. In the meantime, there are few native Afghan agronomists, soil specialists or veterinarians. Several of the land grant universities that have partnered with the National Guard’s ADTs have expressed a desire to have more students from Afghanistan come to the their agricultural colleges for training. But that pipeline of ag students from Afghanistan to the U.S. has not yet been fully established.
That lack of homegrown expertise has serious consequences. An Afghan farmer may dig up the roots of his crops to feed his livestock, leaving no organic material in the soil, which decreases fertility and increases erosion. Basic veterinary services for livestock, while increasing, are still rare. Animal diseases the developed world largely has under control, like rabies, are endemic in Afghanistan.
Wheat is Afghanistan’s staple legal crop. USDA estimates wheat yields for the 2010-2011 crop year in Afghanistan at nearly 24 bushels per acre (1.61 metric tons per hectare). To put this in context, USDA projects U.S. wheat yields this year at nearly 45 bushels per acre (3.01 metric tons per acre). If USDA’s projections for Afghanistan’s wheat production in the year ahead are realized, it would be down from the current crop year’s yield of just over 25 bushels per acre (1.7 metric tons per hectare), but still well above the 2008-2009 crop year, when Afghan wheat production managed to average only around 14 bushels per acre (.94 metric tons per hectare).
The reason for this wild swing in production can be explained in one word: water. Two years ago, as graphically illustrated by the maps above, Afghanistan’s wheat production was slashed by drought. And even when rainfall is abundant, in many locations in Afghanistan there is no way to capture or direct the flow of water to crops or people. Completely aside from the issue of irrigation, the Library of Congress report points out fully half of Afghanistan’s roughly 32 million citizens do not have access to potable water. It is no exaggeration to say water issues are among the most important Iowa’s ADT will face.
These few paragraphs barely scratch the surface of the agricultural problems confronting the Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan and its Coalition partners. And it would be easy to get discouraged. But there is no better organization to take on the challenge of improving Afghanistan’s agriculture sector than America’s National Guard. And there’s no better U.S. state to form and send an ADT than Iowa, which is among the most agriculturally abundant in America.
But what is the National Guard? How does it differ from other components of the U.S. Armed Forces? Why does it matter if National Guard units are the ones forming Agri-Business Development Teams in Afghanistan? I’ll answer those questions in my next post.
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