Afghan Training

 

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Video Transcript

Chuck Denney (UT Institute of Agriculture)
If you were to rank the countries of the world in personal safety, economic stability and quality of life, Afghanistan might be last. The nation remains a hotbed of terrorism, and a collection of human misery. But soon a group of Tennessee National Guardsmen will go on a mission to this troubled land.

Co. Jim Moore (Tennessee National Guard)
“It’s mental. It’s emotion, and it’s physical.”

Chuck Denney
Colonel Jim Moore and 62 other Tennessee Guardsmen will spend nearly a year in the Paktya province, near the Pakistani border. The unit is there to fight terrorism, rebuild the Afghan army - and get the country’s agricultural industry going again after decades of war.

Col. Jim Moore
“So the National Guard and the US Reserve raised their hand and said ‘We have civilian part-time soldiers whose Monday-through-Friday job is agriculture, Ag-business, Ag-engineering, and we’ll help rebuild this economy.”

Chuck Denney
Before the Soviet invasion of 1979, Afghanistan was a strong agricultural country. But mainly all they grow there now are poppies for heroin and opium. The guardsmen will teach the Afghans about farming wheat, fruit, vegetables, caring for livestock - even beekeeping.

Col. Jim Moore
“As I laughed and told somebody it’s everything a Tennessee farm boy has not seen, it’s what we’re going to see. The elevation is from 78-hundred to 15 thousand feet. Average rainfall is less than 24 inches per year.”

Chuck Denney
The guardsmen came to the UT Ag campus recently for training. UT experts will work with the unit - communicating by email and video link - to come up with a 5-year agricultural development plan for the region.The session also included a traditional afghan meal. These soldiers are learning agriculture - and culture.UT experts say the troops must develop a rapport with the people before anything is planted.

Dr. Michael Wilcox (UT Extension)
“What we’re able to do with our expertise is try to help them gain the confidence of the farmer, gain the respect of the farmer, the farmer gains the respect of the troops - and then they begin transferring knowledge, transferring technology.”

Dr. George Smith (UT Extension)
“So we tried to also give them some ideas about how to go into a situation like that, do a rapid evaluation and a rapid assessment, to understand what some opportunities are, and then how to begin to work with the people to make it work.”

Chuck Denney
Agriculture was once the foundation of Afghan society, and it can be again.
This mission will be challenging and dangerous, but these guardsmen believe they have the knowledge and skills to do good work there.

 

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NOTE: The Tennessee Guard unit includes experts in agronomy, pest management, soil science and veterinary medicine.There are also units from Indiana, Missouri, Nebraska and Texas on similar missions in Afghanistan.