Agriculture is one focus of reconstruction efforts in war-ravaged Afghanistan. The key: cultivating a new corps of professionals to help Afghan farmers make up lost ground.

Farmers in Afghanistan are burdened by a bushelful of problems.

An irrigation system in disrepair. Fields that harbor unexploded mines. A shortage of supplies. An antiquated university system, meaning scant educational assistance and agricultural techniques that haven't been updated since the 1970s.

All are legacies of some 25 years of war and the repressive policies of the Taliban, and all are stumbling blocks to restoring the robustness of Afghanistan's agricultural sector. Add in the cumulative effects of several years of drought, and the picture of what Afghan farmers are facing is daunting indeed.

Afghanistan once did quite well for itself agriculturally, and it has the capability to be more than self-sustaining in terms of food production, says Oval Myers. But it desperately needs a helping hand.

John Santas, an associate director of international agricultural programs at the University of Illinois, and Myers, a not-so-retired professor of plant genetics at SIUC, are heading a new project funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development to revitalize agricultural education in Afghanistan as part of postwar reconstruction efforts.

"If we expect Afghanistan to ultimately walk alone, it has got to have its educational system built back up," Myers said in a December 2003 Associated Press interview about the new USAID project, whose goal is professional development of Afghan agriculture teachers and researchers.

For both Myers and Santas, it's a return to a part of the world they know well and an agency they know well. They were among the leaders of a long-term USAID grant project, launched in 1983, to expand the capabilities of Northwest Frontier Province Agricultural University in Peshawar, Pakistan. "Our role was to take it from being a small provincial university to a regional university," Myers says.

The $62 million project, officially called Transformation and Integration of the Provincial Agricultural Network (TIPAN), modernized the curriculum, constructed new buildings, integrated agricultural research stations into the university, developed outreach services for farmers, and gave some 150 faculty graduate education in the United States.

Although TIPAN came to a premature end in 1994, when U.S. legislation barred aid to Pakistan, the university continued to flourish. Now, under the guidance of Santas and Myers, some of its faculty and researchers are training Afghans in up-to-date agricultural methods. It was a natural choice for USAID to turn to the university, and to Santas and Myers, for help in achieving some of its goals in Afghanistan: Peshawar is only a day's drive east of Kabul via the Khyber Pass.

The new USAID training project began in August 2003 with three month-long, hands-on short courses taught at Peshawar on irrigation and water management practices, enterprise development skills, and crop storage and marketing. "These were considered the most important to get started with," Myers says. Several more courses, covering such topics as food preservation, orchard management, animal nutrition, and integrated pest management, were held this year.

The participants have included Afghan ministry workers, university teachers, personnel with nonprofit organizations, and agricultural industry representatives. "It's a train-the-trainers concept," Myers explains. "These people will work directly with the farmers, who need to know how to improve production practices using whatever resources they've got to work with. They've gone essentially 25 years without a viable extension service."

Some 230 Afghans, both men and women, have attended one or more of the short courses. The hope is that eventually thousands of farmers across the country will receive training from these and future personnel taking the courses, many more of which are planned for the next few years. The project will continuously evaluate the success of the outreach efforts.

Most of the agriculture faculty remaining at Afghan universities only have bachelor's degrees--and many of their teachers likewise only had bachelor's degrees. They need more advanced knowledge, in areas ranging from horticulture to animal husbandry, sustainable water use to agricultural economics. Thus, with funding from the project, 10 Afghan agricultural faculty, five each from Kabul University and Nangarhar University, have begun master's-degree work in Peshawar. They will be the first of many master's candidates, Myers hopes.

"We're trying to upgrade their capability to train their own people," he says.

A research program pairing Afghan scientists with Pakistani mentors also is part of the training project. Several Afghan agricultural scientists from research institutes in Kabul and Jalalabad have begun collaborative research with Pakistani colleagues at the Cereal Crops Research Institute in Pirsabak and at a second agricultural research station in Mingora. This "twinning" program, as it's called, is slated to expand to include additional researchers and research areas in the years ahead.

USAID has committed nearly $1.9 million to help fund the training through 2007. The grant is officially to the International Arid Lands Consortium, a group of universities and research institutes of which the University of Illinois is a member. Another $400,000 in USAID money was received in 2004 via the Afghan government's Rebuilding Agricultural Markets in Afghanistan Program.

The field office director in Peshawar, Abdul Qayyun Khan, is a former USAID veteran who previously worked with Myers and Santas in Peshawar. Khan did a preliminary needs assessment on short courses to offer, and the three men met in October 2003 with representatives from Afghan government and nongovernment agencies to do long-term planning about activities. Mohammad Agha Jabarkhil, the project's assistant training coordinator, is based in Kabul; he and Khan are coordinating day-to-day details of the project, from advertising the courses to making travel arrangements for participants.

Besides having personnel trained to assist them, Afghan farmers need other help, too--help that will require an infusion of outside assistance, both in funds and materials. For example, Afghanistan must rely on irrigation for 85 percent of its farmland. Repairing the irrigation system, which had been deteriorating for years and was seriously damaged by military operations, is "probably the major reconstruction problem," Myers says.

Developing and maintaining other infrastructure needed for agriculture--from roads to storage facilities for exports--also will be crucial. Livestock herds must be built back up. Supplies of seed, fertilizer, and herbicide are needed. The country must not only boost production to feed its own people, but must redevelop outside markets.

"They need to develop their internal markets, but, particularly on the borders, they need to export their excess," Myers says. Pakistan is Afghanistan's top trading partner, which is one reason that it was willing to be part of the USAID effort.

With some 21 million acres of land under cultivation, Afghanistan has about the same amount of cropland that Illinois does. Afghan farmers grow a wide range of crops--wheat, corn, barley, cotton, nuts, fruits, and vegetables. (Contrary to popular misconceptions, only about 1 percent of land is in opium poppy production, although that has been increasing and is a serious concern.)

One of the few crops not grown in Afghanistan is that mainstay of Illinois agriculture, soybeans. But a second project with which Myers is involved may change that.

Nutrition and Education International, a U.S.-based nonprofit organization focusing on improving nutrition in Afghanistan, is experimenting with growing soybeans there as a high-quality protein source. Balkh University provided some farmland near Mazar-e-Sharif, a city in northern Afghanistan, for the experiment, and the Ministry of Agriculture and Animal Husbandry also is involved with the project.

Mike Schmidt, a soybean breeder and associate professor of plant science at SIUC, supplied two Carbondale-bred varieties of beans suitable for the latitude and climate. (Like Southern Illinois, the region has hot, humid summers and cool winters.) So far, says Myers, reports have it that the varieties are growing well.

A soybean expert from way back, Myers is serving as a production consultant on the research project, which is also testing several other soybean varieties provided by Stine Seeds, a major soybean company. He will return to Pakistan and Afghanistan this fall to work with the USAID project, but then will travel to Mazar-e-Sharif to check on the harvest and give seminars on soybean production.

The soybean project looks promising enough that the agriculture ministry is eager to expand it to several locations throughout the country, which will require selecting bean varieties appropriate for different regions.

Myers is optimistic about the ability of both projects to help Afghan farmers improve production after years of political instability, war, and government neglect. With the Taliban out of power, he says, there is "a great hunger for knowledge" among the Afghan people--men and women alike.

"They are a very entrepreneurial people," he says.

"If there's an opportunity, they take it."

--by Marilyn Davis, ed.