Alcon - I've been uncharacteristically quiet the last few weeks. Work got in the way. I hate it when that happens.

Vertnyc,
I'm a retired AID officer, enjoying the Iraqi sun for past 3 years, with a bit of time in Helmand before that. Lovely place.
You are correct in your assertion that all economics, like politics, is local. Village residents aren't concerned with Khandahar, let alone Kabul, until political authorities involve themselves in the economic sphere. For example, when it got on its feet in 2003, the first act of the state-run cotton gin in Helmand was to have the police burn the nine private gins so as to regain its monopoly. So the AID program got out of cotton. We tried lentils -- big Indian market, durable commodity, and a simple value chain -- except that we misunderstood the friction costs of transport. By the time the payoffs were done, there was no profit left for the marketer. So we got out of lentils. Wheat was the default crop, and we noticed a lot of dried poppies hanging in sheds.
Nonetheless, the adage about think globally but act locally works in conflictive situations. If you can survive the Kabul-speak, we found that the best approach in crops was to ask villagers what they could sell. We traced the truckers and their routes to sketch the market links to estimate returns to the farmer. This approach was successful in Charikar with raisins, but we never found a good (licit) crop for Helmand.
Hope you have better luck!!