Agricultural Component of the Afghanistan Surge?

[Jedburgh]

Roots of Peace, 2 Sep 09: Comparative Net Income from Afghan Crops

Among the long list of challenges in rebuilding Afghanistan, drugs stand out as the most daunting of tasks which offends our civil society. It is such a daunting task that many believe that it is impossible to find an alternative crop that pays farmers better than poppy. The reality is that there several more lucrative alternatives to poppy. The myth is that there are no better alternatives. The second myth is that the drug problem is the fault of the drug lords and cartels and we simply need to stamp out all production of this evil plant. The reality is that we must stop looking to solve our drug problem solely by stopping its’ production. Production of heroin is surely a problem we need to solve, but as long as there are buyers in the western markets, there will be producers somewhere in this world. Historically, the power of the market has proven to be irresistible and unbeatable: if market conditions are right, someone will respond. But, we can use these same market forces to stimulate Afghan farmers to switch out of poppy production by helping them see the better income opportunities associated with alternative crops. Perennial crops, like grapes, almonds, apricots, cherries and pomegranates have a clear advantage over opium.

AREU, Apr 09: Water Management, Livestock and the Opium Economy: Challenges and Opportunities for Strengthening Licit Agricultural Livelihoods

The major objective of this research is to enhance the sustainability of Afghan rural livelihoods and reduce dependency on illicit crops by providing policymakers with clear and accurate information on the use, management and role of natural resources in farming systems, and how these influence opportunities for agricultural development. The research is intended to produce evidence-based recommendations to increase the effectiveness of agricultural and rural policy. To achieve this goal the WOL project team has undertaken an ambitious programme of field research, spanning eight Afghan provinces and many rural communities, using a combination of research methods and integrating diverse thematic studies through an empirically grounded farming systems approach.

[Surferbeetle]

From the Stars and Stripes by Sandra Jontz Water projects hurting Afghan farmers

KHOST PROVINCE, Afghanistan — Poor placement and management of wells and dams over several years by nongovernmental organizations and military reconstruction teams throughout Khost province have drained water tables, drying out land cultivated by thousands of farmers in the mountains.

As a result, some farmers who grow wheat, corn, rice or fruit didn’t grow enough crops to feed their families. They turned to earning money by logging and goat herding or other means, and bought food at markets.

The solution is smaller dams that are easier to maintain and allow melted snow and rainwater to pool in more places and seep into the ground, raising the water table.

The dams, ranging from one to three feet in height, will be easier for villagers to clean and maintain, said Joyce, who before joining the Army worked as a ranch manager in western Oregon.

Watershed management is one of many projects undertaken by the ADT soldiers, who arrived in eastern Afghanistan in March as part of the U.S. military’s effort to stabilize farming, the country’s main source of subsistence and income. Roughly 85 percent of the nation’s inhabitants are farmers.

The state of Indiana has pledged to supply National Guard units for five years to maintain continuity in the effort, officials said. The 1-19th is the first.

By stabilizing the farming industry, and enabling farmers to not only survive but eventually profit, officials hope to give military-age men alternatives to fighting alongside the anti-government forces, which in the province include the Taliban, al-Qaida and the Haqqani network.

The handpicked teams of guardsmen are specialists in agribusiness, including farming, ranching and business practices, and will help Afghans with, among other things, forestry, agronomy, horticulture, range land management and animal husbandry, said Maj. Ron Crane, the educational director. He recently hosted a "train the trainer" session for Afghan extension agents.

[slapout9]

From the Stars and Stripes by Sandra Jontz Water projects hurting Afghan farmers

Excellent post Surfer. That is some systems thinking If you get the water....you get the food. These are Strategic targets of the highest order they determine whether a population will live or die regardless of what belief they system is.

Lock....er down....getttt er done

[Surferbeetle]

Lock....er down....getttt er done

Darcy's law is the start point. Aquifer modeling software can be a bear to use, it can also be a bit black-box, but it's worth the time. Visual Modflow is often considered to be the standard-bearer in this field (I have no financial interests or otherwise in the company). One of the technical reference bibles regarding aquifer modeling is Freeze and Cherry's book Groundwater Aquifer/Groundwater modeling is a graduate course offering in civil engineering programs...and I suspect that petroleum engineers would be able to offer a wealth of information to anyone so interested..

[marct]

and I suspect that petroleum engineers would be able to offer a wealth of information to anyone so interested..

I have a friend who is a hydrogeologist who has done a lot of work building modeling software in the area as well.

[Surferbeetle]

Hey Marc,

We will need to catch a beer sometime

As we consider the Stars and Stripes story we might also think about how a groundwater model is built and what it can tell us versus what we think it can tell us. Here are a few things to consider, and of course this is not an all inclusive list:

1. Was the model developed using uniform procedures and methods?

2. How was the above ground survey performed?

• Ground team, LIDAR, IFSAR, etc? Each has pro's and con's and different levels of accuracy and precision which can significantly impact the model.

• Was the same datum used for measurements taken?

3. How were engineering properties/concerns that we need to input into the model gathered?

• When were all of the water surface elevations taken (spring, summer, fall, winter, morning, lunchtime, evening, etc.) and how were they measured?

• Were the wells logged and the resulting data captured?

• Can the resulting geotechnical data be used to estimate transmissivity, storage, etc. ?

• Were the effects of nearby wells considered?

4. How often is data captured to update the model?

5. Is there a QA/QC process and do all involved understand it and buy in?

Most importantly we need to ask if all ISAF personnel are consistently coaching Afghans how to catch that particular fish.

[Surferbeetle]

From the September 10th 2009 Economist: India's water crisis
When the rains fail

Many Indians share his worries. Around 450m live off rain-fed agriculture, and this year’s monsoon rains, which between June and September provide 80% of India’s precipitation, have been the scantiest in decades. Almost half India’s 604 districts are affected by drought, especially in the poorest and most populous states—such as Bihar, which has declared drought in 26 of its 38 districts. Uttar Pradesh (UP), home to 185m, expects its main rice harvest to be down by 60%. The outlook for the winter wheat crop is also poor, with India’s main reservoirs, a source for irrigation canals, one-third below their seasonal average. That also means less water for thirsty cities, including Delhi, where 18m people live and the water board meets around half their demand in a good year.

Belated cloudbursts in AP and other states have brought relief. But late sowing tends to produce a thin harvest. AP counted some 20 farmer suicides last month, and there will be more. A short drive from Hyderabad, Koteswara Rao watched as four Hindu outcasts and two blue-horned bullocks ploughed his 16 acres (14 of them leased) for cotton. If it fails he will be left with a $4,000 debt and, being of lofty caste, he said, he could never sweat it out as a labourer. “Suicide would be easier.”

[Surferbeetle]

For those of you building a library; although not as mathematically rigorous as the go-to book Groundwater by our good Canadian Doctors Freeze and Cherry, an equally important, very accessible, and commonly referenced book is Dr. Driscoll's work, in partnership with Johnson Screens/US Filter, entitled Groundwater and Wells.

Don't forget your dowsing rods...

[Steve the Planner]

Beetle:

Right: Water Management is a big target, but if you look, for example, at Saudi Arabia's water planning structure (applicable to other marginal wayter areas), they identify, for example, historical aquifers that are non-recharging, as well as those that are recharging, and their recharge rates, and sources.

It is from the stratified volume analyses that they can then determine sustainable water use models, and make critical planning decisions about how, and how much, to use it.

Of course, they also have access to MONEY, which can create water by expensive desalinization processes.

In Iraq, my big battle was to keep the US from drilling wells everywhere as a quick fix which, like in India, was sure to destabilize a rapidly dropping regional water table. There is actually a very deep aquifer which few used, but it wouldn't take long to be adversely affected if everybody used it.

Still, it fascinates me that the indigenous Afghan traditional approaches of small scale, easy maintenance systems are so well adapted, but our folks always want to bring what they know from Missouri or Pennsylvania to these very unique and challenging environments.

In April, I attended a planning seminar in Minneapolis, and there was a great seminar on adapting what is known elsewhere to the emerging and very real problems in the Southwestern US. Trying to find sustainable approaches.

Sooner or later, we might learn from the Afghans how we might be able to help them.

Steve

[Surferbeetle]

Hey Steve,

One of the books on the nightstand is The Conquest of Nature, Water Landscape, and the Making of Modern Germany by David Blackbourn. It seems to be a pretty even handed treatment of things and it is my first exposure to a water based history as opposed to technical report. If I find one about Afghanistan I'll pass it along.

Steve

[Steve the Planner]

Beetle:

I studied the history of Germany in college, so the book looks pretty interesting from what I could see on line.

I wonder how the contrasting force of mass out-migration from Europe in that period, plus the need to create safe and habitable cities (for business/prosperity) played a role. The push for greater productivity vs. the fear of losing more and more residents and competitive advantage.

In Iraq,from about 1980 to 2006, so many of the people with the skills to operate and maintain public water, water treatment, and disposal systems just disappeared (migration, attacks on technocrats, engineers), and many that could have made a difference were disabled either by internal Iraqi agency politics or US involvement, that I remain confused as to whether they can rebuild the kinds of functional systems needed to live safely in an urbanized framework, as before. (Note: According to Pheobe Marr, there were several major waves of Iraqi Exodus...not just US problem).

I've always been intrigued by the relationship between technology and society, and I guess we will, in Iraq, have a laboratory, over the next decade, to understand what happens next.

Steve

[Surferbeetle]

Beetle:

I studied the history of Germany in college, so the book looks pretty interesting from what I could see on line.

Steve, college German classes were some good times…after my third year, they started talking about 08:00 classes and so I stopped…I had a policy back then…nothing good comes of anything before 11:00 am Engineering came later, and almost all of my engineering professors fought to have their classes start at 08:00…. different culture, different parts of campus.

I wonder how the contrasting force of mass out-migration from Europe in that period, plus the need to create safe and habitable cities (for business/prosperity) played a role. The push for greater productivity vs. the fear of losing more and more residents and competitive advantage.

Your questions and observations are interesting to think about. Let’s see if I can tie Germany, Iraq, Afghanistan, migration, water, and agriculture together. Dr. Kurt Reinhardt provides a thorough coverage of the German Volkerwanderung which kicked off around A.D 375, involved millions, and may have contributed to the fall of the Roman Empire. Dr. Blackbourn examines migration, water, and agriculture over an approximately 250-year time span. He covers the 1770’s Prussian gamble, Peuplierungspolitik, which resulted in the establishment approximately 1,200 planned new villages for an inflow of approximately 300,000 immigrants during the reign of Frederick the Great. Immigrants were recruited and received travel costs, customs exemptions, exemption from military service and free wood, while in return Prussia received needed human capital and agricultural capital and was able to develop important geography which eventually included a north sea port, Wilhemshaven, in East Friesland in 1873. I have come to chapter five (of six) in which he examines the intersection of Lebensraum, the Pripet Marshes, approximately 400,000 settlers, and a planned takeover and settlement of existing villages during the 1940's. Tragic and heartbreaking.

In Iraq,from about 1980 to 2006, so many of the people with the skills to operate and maintain public water, water treatment, and disposal systems just disappeared (migration, attacks on technocrats, engineers), and many that could have made a difference were disabled either by internal Iraqi agency politics or US involvement, that I remain confused as to whether they can rebuild the kinds of functional systems needed to live safely in an urbanized framework, as before. (Note: According to Pheobe Marr, there were several major waves of Iraqi Exodus...not just US problem).

I've always been intrigued by the relationship between technology and society, and I guess we will, in Iraq, have a laboratory, over the next decade, to understand what happens next.

The internet seems to indicate that Iraqi and Afghan immigrants are a reality for Germany which appears to have approximately 100,000 registered Afghan immigrants of varying demographics. My current read concerning Iraq is Charles Tripp’s A History of Iraq, however I am going to pick up Pheobe Marr’s book as well. My boots on the ground experience was that during the summer of 2003 those Iraqi technocrats who had not already left were making serious plans to leave Iraq. Things thinned out as the year went on. With respect to unfolding events in the utility realm ArabianBusiness has the following August 2009 story by Khalid al-Ansary: Iraq scraps $3bn bond sale

Earlier this month, Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki berated lawmakers for failing to ratify a bill for the bond sale before parliament broke for summer recess, saying Iraq needed the money to pay General Electric.

In 2008, Iraq signed multi-billion dollar deals with GE and Siemens to add nearly 9,000 megawatts of capacity over the next few years.

"The issue of the bonds has ended," said senior central bank advisor Mudher Kasim. About $2.4 billion of the $3 billion bond sale was destined for electricity projects.

Iraq has scrapped a plan to sell $3 billion of treasury bonds, mostly to pay for electricity projects, and instead plans to raise the money through domestic banks, a central bank advisor said on Sunday.

Iraq would instead raise $2.4 billion by allowing banks to lend the Finance Ministry cash from their reserve requirements, at a rate of two percent for a term of one year.

Iraq had to slash its 2009 budget three times due to a sharp fall in oil prices from last year. Almost all of Iraq's income is derived from oil sales from its vast reserves, the world's third largest.

I have been following Iraqi business benchmarks at SWJ here. The ISX website appears to be down today.

[davidbfpo]

From Surfer Bettle:

The internet seems to indicate that Iraqi and Afghan immigrants are a reality for Germany which appears to have approximately 100,000 registered Afghan immigrants of varying demographics.

You have touched upon an issue that I suspect is debated elsewhere in development sphres - the exodus of trained manpower from developing countries to the developed world. In the UK this is particularly prominient in the health profession.

Back to the agricultral theme. What has happened to the skilled manpower which has returned to Afghanistan, including businessmen from the USA as reported a few years ago?

That would be an interesting metric for the success of COIN.

davidbfpo

[Surferbeetle]

Back to the agricultral theme. What has happened to the skilled manpower which has returned to Afghanistan, including businessmen from the USA as reported a few years ago?

That would be an interesting metric for the success of COIN.

David,

Appreciate your post, it led to a lazy and informative Sunday stroll through the ‘interweb’ which turned up some concepts from an armchair view of things with respect to some of the social implications of migration.

Factors of Production

In economics, factors of production (or productive inputs) are the resources employed to produce goods and services. They facilitate production but do not become part of the product (as with raw materials) or are significantly transformed by the production process (as with fuel used to power machinery). To 19th century economists, the factors of production were land (natural resources, gifts from nature), labor (the ability to work), and capital goods (human-made tools and equipment). Recent textbooks have added entrepreneurship and "human capital" (labor's education and skills). [1] "Land" can include ecosystems while sometimes the overall state of technology is seen as a factor of production.[2] In any event, it is the scarcity of the factors of production which poses humanity's economic problem, often forcing us to choose between competing goals. The number and definition of factors varies, depending on theoretical purpose, empirical emphasis, or school of economics.[3]

Georg Simmel

Georg Simmel was born on March 1, 1858, in the very heart of Berlin, the corner of Leipzigerstrasse and Friedrichstrasse. This was a curious birthplace--it would correspond to Times Square in New York--but it seems symbolically fitting for a man who throughout his life lived in the intersection of many movements, intensely affected by the cross-currents of intellectual traffic and by a multiplicity of moral directions. Simmel was a modern urban man, without roots in traditional folk culture. Upon reading Simmel's first book, F. Toennies wrote to a friend: "The book is shrewd but it has the flavor of the metropolis." Like "the stranger" he described in his brilliant essay of the same name, he was near and far at the same time, a "potential wanderer; although he [had] not moved on, he [had] not quite overcome the freedom of coming and going." One of the major theorists to emerge in German philosophy and social science around the turn of the century, he remains atypical, a perturbing and fascinating figure to his more organically rooted contemporaries.

A lecture via podcast from the London School of Economics by Dr Joshua Barker: The Tycoon and the Tough: towards a comparative anthropology of urban marginality

Anthropologists often use key figures, such as the street tough, the child witch, and the flâneur, as a means to elucidate, personify, and critique underlying dynamics of social and cultural transformation. It is a method that is widely used, but seldom scrutinised. In this lecture Joshua Barker uses examples from his research in the slums of Bandung, Indonesia, to argue that this method can make a powerful contribution to a comparative anthropology of urban marginality.

A lecture via podcast from the London School of Economics by Christopher Caldwell: Reflections on the Revolution in Europe: can Europe be the same with different people in it?

After a half-century of mass immigration, has Europe overestimated the need for immigrant labour and underestimated the culture shaping potential of religion? Christopher Caldwell is a senior editor at the Weekly Standard, and a regular contributor to the Financial Times. His new book is entitled Reflections on the Revolution in Europe: Islam, immigration and the west

[davidbfpo]

If interested Gretchen Peters is speaking at The Frontline Club, London evening 3rd November 2009. For details see: http://frontlineclub.com/events/2009...spectives.html and costs ten UK pounds if booked early.

davidbfpo

[davidbfpo]

Found via a Canadian e-list of think tank products; Paul Robinson compares the two different approaches, not just in agriculture and makes some key points: http://www.amconmag.com/article/2009/aug/01/00030/

davidbfpo

[vertnyc]

Ag surge is coming. Don't worry.

USDA is supposed to have up to 64 people in Afghanistan. I'm comfortable right now traveling with our USDA rep going around on the ground and doing assessments and actual extension classes if needed.

My only issue is why is there 11 agri-business development teams (ADTs)going to RC(E) and only 1 going to RC(S)?

That doesn't really make too much sense to me...

Kind of like COMISAF's "Spend 95% of the time with 95% of the population"

It sounds really good...but do we even have the logistical capacity to do so?

How long does it take to build a company sized combat outpost? Some experts tell me 4 months to do it properly...some people say 2 weeks just to get "something" up. I haven't heard a standardized answer yet.

Yet we are expanding Kandahar Airfield even more and more, why not relocate those assets for COP construction?...kick all the people out of the big FOBs so they can know what "real Afghanistan" is like. "Real Afghanistan" isn't an Iced cappucino at the French Deli...although I do enjoy it once in a while

Why not give us more engineering assets in RC(S) beyond the 30th NCR and USACE?

[Surferbeetle]

From today's Washington Post: Agriculture expert picked to lead struggling USAID

President Obama on Tuesday named a 36-year-old doctor and agriculture expert to head the U.S. Agency for International Development, filling what lawmakers and aid experts had called a glaring vacancy on a key foreign-policy front.

Shah, whose family emigrated from India, holds an MD and a master's in health economics....

[Pol-Mil FSO]

During my year at the Kandahar PRT, the PRT Commander declined to approve several water projects proposed by the PRT CIMIC (Civil Affairs) Section. He pointed out that the PRT did not have hydrology experts to determine the ecological consequences of these projects, nor did we have an sufficiently adequate understanding of the demographic layout of the relevant watersheds that would allow us to determine potential conflicts between clans, villages, etc. that could be caused by changes to the current water situation.

Water is one of the most vital issues in southern Afghanistan and one that provides big potential payoffs if the coalition can help the Afghan Government improve it, but both hydrology experts and ethnic anthropology experts need to provide advice before starting a project that affects current water arrangements.

[Surferbeetle]

From the 22nd of October edition of The Economist: California's water wars:
Of farms, folks and fish

IN 2007 Oliver Wanger, a federal judge in California, ordered the huge pumping stations of the Sacramento Delta, the largest estuary on the west coast of the Americas, to reduce by a third the water they delivered to two aqueducts that run south to the farms of the San Joaquin Valley and onward to the vast conurbations of southern California. His reason was the delta smelt, a translucent fish less than eight centimetres (three inches) long that lives only in the delta and is considered endangered under federal law. The pumping plants were sucking in the fish and grinding them up. The next year, a “biological opinion” by the federal Fish and Wildlife Service reinforced Judge Wanger’s order. Pumping from the delta remains restricted.

The consequences of these restrictions, which coincided with a drought that is now in its third year, reach far beyond one small population of fish. About two-thirds of Californians get at least some of their water from the delta, so with the stroke of a judicial pen the entire state, the world’s eighth-largest economy and America’s “fruit basket”, entered an economic and political crisis.

The pumping restrictions were a huge victory for environmentalists, who fill the ranks of one of the three armies in California’s perennial water wars. With increasing success since the 1970s, greens have argued that the delta in particular, and California’s dammed rivers and wetlands in general, are on the verge of ecological collapse and must be saved.

For the other two armies, the restrictions amounted to a stinging defeat. One army consists of urban consumers in the dry south, represented by the Metropolitan Water District, which supplies water to about 19m people, over half the state’s population, and gets 30% of its supply from one of the two delta aqueducts. The authority has had to pay farmers in the Central Valley to give up their allocations and let their fields lie fallow, says Jeffrey Kightlinger, its boss. This year it also had to impose mandatory conservation measures.

The pain has been far worse, however, for the third force: agriculture. The farmers and farm workers who have been hardest hit live in the western San Joaquin Valley, which is supplied by the Westlands Water District, America’s largest irrigation authority. Westlands has contracts to draw water from the other (federally financed) aqueduct. Tom Birmingham, its boss, says that, because of the drought and the pumping restrictions, it is receiving only 10% of its entitlement this year.