TARKMAH, AFGHANISTAN — Master Sgt. Colin Jones grew up on a farm in Nebraska and earned a degree in farm and ranch management.
Now he's gone back to Farming 101, having volunteered for military duty in Afghanistan, where he is helping drag crop practices out of the 19th century and forward to, say, 1940s America.
"You have to keep it simple and grounded," Jones said one sunny morning in this picturesque village, where he talked about fertilizer, invasive weeds and beekeeping with one of the top farmers in the area, the weather-beaten Sher Agah.
Jones, 44, a calm straight- talker from Elkhorn, Neb., is part of the U.S. Army's first agribusiness development team in Parwan province and three adjacent provinces in northeastern Afghanistan. On his sleeve he wears a cornstalk logo, the patch of Forward 28 ADT, a Nebraska National Guard unit.
Since October, Jones and six other specialists have bounced in armored vehicles along rutted roads to visit remote villages where farmers plow with oxen and plant seeds by hand. His team of volunteer guardsmen is here to help farmers increase yields, improve efficiency and modernize their growing and storage methods.
They have provided tractors, farm machinery and their own expertise. They're building vineyards and greenhouses while teaching irrigation, fertilizing and planting. They also lecture at Kabul University.
"If we can help them feed themselves and sustain their families, maybe they won't need the Taliban," Jones said.
In a country where 80% of working-age males are small-scale farmers, such a program might seem central to the rebuilding effort. Yet the U.S. military has just 350 agricultural specialists in a country of 31 million, covering nine of 34 provinces.
Using military discretionary funds, Jones' team operates in an obscure corner separate from America's civilian-funded reconstruction effort, which since 2001 has cost $7.9 billion.
For years, the United States has focused on eradicating opium poppies, by far Afghanistan's leading cash crop and foreign currency earner. Help for millions of subsistence farmers growing wheat, corn and other staples has been a lower priority.
The eradication program, called "a sad joke" by the director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, did nothing to prevent skyrocketing opium production after the fall of the Taliban regime in 2001.
