Lisa 23
06-02-11, 08:36 PM
Farm training helps Marines work with Afghanistan's farmers
By Elizabeth Weise (http://content.usatoday.com/topics/reporter/Elizabeth+Weise), USA TODAY
The Marines are about to land in Fresno.
No, it's not an assault. Rather, on Monday, about 20 U.S. Marines (http://content.usatoday.com/topics/topic/U.S.+Marines) will arrive at California State (http://content.usatoday.com/topics/topic/California+State) University-Fresno for some down-in-the-dirt farm training. They'll spend a week learning how to test soil, assess an irrigation system, check livestock for disease and prune a pomegranate tree.
The goal of the training is to teach Marines who may have little background in agriculture something about the kind of farming that is the lifeblood of Afghanistan.
"Afghanistan is still an agrarian society; 85% of people there still have a connection to the land," says Bill Erysian, coordinator of the California State University Consortium for International Development, which began the program last June.
The course's first graduates, in June of last year, were 15 officers and enlisted Marines with the 11th Marine Regiment Civil Affairs Detachment, stationed at Camp Pendleton in California. They were later deployed to Helmand province in Afghanistan. A second unit of 20 went through the course in March at Cal Poly-San Luis Obispo (http://content.usatoday.com/topics/topic/Cal+Poly-San+Luis+Obispo).
"It gave us a basic working knowledge of the glue that holds their society together. Being conversant in basic agricultural practice is really imperative for anyone whose job is to interact with civilians," says 1st Lt. Karl Kadon of the 11th Marine Regiment, civil affairs. He did the first training and then used his new skills in Afghanistan.
Teaching them the basics
The training, basic to a farmer, is not so basic to your average American or your average Marine, Erysian says. "We teach them about things like: How do you determine what's good soil and bad soil? What are the different types of irrigation methods they can expect to see in Helmand province? What types of livestock are they going to encounter?"
Even simple things can make all the difference on the ground. "We tell them when you walk onto a farm, ask the farmer about what he grows, about his irrigation," Erysian says. Once they've been through the training, a Marine who couldn't have told a plum from a peach can now say, 'Oh, I see you've got some pomegranate trees over there. Let me show you how you can prune it to get better yields.'"
Kadon used what he had learned as soon as he was sent to the Sangin area in Helmand province, when he and his unit were building a road to access one of their bases. They had to blast their way through a farmer's field. They compensated the farmer, but the new road also had blocked part of the canal system that fed water to all the fields in the area.
Because of the training, Kardon knew what the irrigation system should have looked like "so I could judge how much we'd damaged things and what crops he was growing, because we paid people depending on what they were growing."
Kadon helped create the workshop after doing intelligence work in Iraq and then being assigned to civil affairs in Afghanistan. "I tried to look at the gaps, things we were missing, and agriculture was one of them."
The training gives the Marines "an agricultural Rolodex" they can use in the field, Kardon says. "We knew we weren't going to learn everything in a week, so basically we got names on a piece of paper: For water issues, call this guy; for soil, call this guy."
It effectively turns the agriculture professors into an on-call rapid response team for the Marines. "They take photos with their cellphones and they shoot them directly to our people here," Erysian says. "We make it a point to try to respond in 24 hours because we know they have little time, few resources, and often they're not in a safe situation."
Since the training started, staff at the five California State universities involved — Chico, Fresno, Humboldt, Pomona and San Luis Obispo (http://content.usatoday.com/topics/topic/San+Luis+Obispo)— have gotten used to getting cellphone photos and e-mails with questions from Marines in Afghanistan.
"I had one officer write to me from Nangarhar province, where there's an olive processing plant," Erysian says. He thought they weren't getting enough oil output, so he sent photos of the groves and the plant. That one went straight to the California Olive Oil Council, which "immediately e-mailed back to say their trees were too close together."
Another photo of an irrigation system went to a Fresno water expert. Erysian says it took just a glance for the expert to reply, "The concrete is cracked and it's leaking — and the floodgate needs to be repaired."
Getting help quickly
That kind of instant information is a huge help to the Marines working with the local populations, the officers tell Erysian.
The training has worked in part because Fresno has almost exactly the same agro-climate as Helmand province in Afghanistan, including the use of irrigation, and grows many of the same crops: olives, almonds, pomegranates, tomatoes, cucumbers, raisins, apricots and wheat.
Helmand is the main poppy-growing region of Afghanistan, producing much of the world's opium, so the military is making an effort to get farmers to transition to wheat.
The training doesn't replace the much more comprehensive programs offered by the U.S. Agency for International Development and non-governmental organizations. "But these are the first contacts a lot of these farmers are going to have with American military, so the idea is to give them the types of tools necessary to assist the Afghans at the farmer level," Erysian says.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/military/2011-06-02-Marines-Afghanistan-agriculture-farmers-training_n.htm
By Elizabeth Weise (http://content.usatoday.com/topics/reporter/Elizabeth+Weise), USA TODAY
The Marines are about to land in Fresno.
No, it's not an assault. Rather, on Monday, about 20 U.S. Marines (http://content.usatoday.com/topics/topic/U.S.+Marines) will arrive at California State (http://content.usatoday.com/topics/topic/California+State) University-Fresno for some down-in-the-dirt farm training. They'll spend a week learning how to test soil, assess an irrigation system, check livestock for disease and prune a pomegranate tree.
The goal of the training is to teach Marines who may have little background in agriculture something about the kind of farming that is the lifeblood of Afghanistan.
"Afghanistan is still an agrarian society; 85% of people there still have a connection to the land," says Bill Erysian, coordinator of the California State University Consortium for International Development, which began the program last June.
The course's first graduates, in June of last year, were 15 officers and enlisted Marines with the 11th Marine Regiment Civil Affairs Detachment, stationed at Camp Pendleton in California. They were later deployed to Helmand province in Afghanistan. A second unit of 20 went through the course in March at Cal Poly-San Luis Obispo (http://content.usatoday.com/topics/topic/Cal+Poly-San+Luis+Obispo).
"It gave us a basic working knowledge of the glue that holds their society together. Being conversant in basic agricultural practice is really imperative for anyone whose job is to interact with civilians," says 1st Lt. Karl Kadon of the 11th Marine Regiment, civil affairs. He did the first training and then used his new skills in Afghanistan.
Teaching them the basics
The training, basic to a farmer, is not so basic to your average American or your average Marine, Erysian says. "We teach them about things like: How do you determine what's good soil and bad soil? What are the different types of irrigation methods they can expect to see in Helmand province? What types of livestock are they going to encounter?"
Even simple things can make all the difference on the ground. "We tell them when you walk onto a farm, ask the farmer about what he grows, about his irrigation," Erysian says. Once they've been through the training, a Marine who couldn't have told a plum from a peach can now say, 'Oh, I see you've got some pomegranate trees over there. Let me show you how you can prune it to get better yields.'"
Kadon used what he had learned as soon as he was sent to the Sangin area in Helmand province, when he and his unit were building a road to access one of their bases. They had to blast their way through a farmer's field. They compensated the farmer, but the new road also had blocked part of the canal system that fed water to all the fields in the area.
Because of the training, Kardon knew what the irrigation system should have looked like "so I could judge how much we'd damaged things and what crops he was growing, because we paid people depending on what they were growing."
Kadon helped create the workshop after doing intelligence work in Iraq and then being assigned to civil affairs in Afghanistan. "I tried to look at the gaps, things we were missing, and agriculture was one of them."
The training gives the Marines "an agricultural Rolodex" they can use in the field, Kardon says. "We knew we weren't going to learn everything in a week, so basically we got names on a piece of paper: For water issues, call this guy; for soil, call this guy."
It effectively turns the agriculture professors into an on-call rapid response team for the Marines. "They take photos with their cellphones and they shoot them directly to our people here," Erysian says. "We make it a point to try to respond in 24 hours because we know they have little time, few resources, and often they're not in a safe situation."
Since the training started, staff at the five California State universities involved — Chico, Fresno, Humboldt, Pomona and San Luis Obispo (http://content.usatoday.com/topics/topic/San+Luis+Obispo)— have gotten used to getting cellphone photos and e-mails with questions from Marines in Afghanistan.
"I had one officer write to me from Nangarhar province, where there's an olive processing plant," Erysian says. He thought they weren't getting enough oil output, so he sent photos of the groves and the plant. That one went straight to the California Olive Oil Council, which "immediately e-mailed back to say their trees were too close together."
Another photo of an irrigation system went to a Fresno water expert. Erysian says it took just a glance for the expert to reply, "The concrete is cracked and it's leaking — and the floodgate needs to be repaired."
Getting help quickly
That kind of instant information is a huge help to the Marines working with the local populations, the officers tell Erysian.
The training has worked in part because Fresno has almost exactly the same agro-climate as Helmand province in Afghanistan, including the use of irrigation, and grows many of the same crops: olives, almonds, pomegranates, tomatoes, cucumbers, raisins, apricots and wheat.
Helmand is the main poppy-growing region of Afghanistan, producing much of the world's opium, so the military is making an effort to get farmers to transition to wheat.
The training doesn't replace the much more comprehensive programs offered by the U.S. Agency for International Development and non-governmental organizations. "But these are the first contacts a lot of these farmers are going to have with American military, so the idea is to give them the types of tools necessary to assist the Afghans at the farmer level," Erysian says.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/military/2011-06-02-Marines-Afghanistan-agriculture-farmers-training_n.htm