Click on the link above to watch Rep. Nolan’s exchange with retired Minnesota National Guard Col. Eric Ahlness, who commended a 12-member Agribusiness Development Team in Afghanistan in 2011.
There’s an old saying, “Food comes first. The path to harmony lies through the stomach.” Food security is the foundation for restoring peace and economic progress for some of the most dangerous and volatile places in the world, including Afghanistan. And as we learned during a House Agriculture Committee hearing last week, the Minnesota National Guard performed brilliantly in helping Afghan farmers in Zabul Province move away from growing poppies for heroin and toward cultivating nutritious, sustainable food for their families and the people in their region.
During the hearing, retired National Guard Col. Eric Ahlness, who commanded the Minnesota Guard’s 12-member volunteer Agribusiness Development Team in 2011, admitted that Afghanistan is “a terribly corrupt place” where enormous amounts of U.S. aid have been wasted. Moreover, he described how our own rules and regulations discourage and even prohibit us from negotiating terms for local agricultural projects, even though such bargaining is part of the Afghan culture. For example, hats off to Col. Ahlness and his team for saving taxpayer money and delivering a better product by in one case rejecting an initial bid of $2 million for a project they were eventually able to deliver for $66,000.
Col. Ahlness, who grew up on a Minnesota farm, told us how the Minnesota team completed more than 800 missions, side by side with local farmers and U.S. security forces. Because agriculture in Afghanistan is so primitive, they worked to bypass the need for crops that require refrigeration, encouraging other high value commodities like almonds, dried apricots and grapes. One member of the team worked to reintroduce an Asian bee population able to withstand the local predators and diseases. The Minnesota team also helped organize a veterinary seminar and animal inoculation program. And the female soldiers in the unit worked closely with local Afghan women, mentoring and in some cases encouraging their own entrepreneurial ideas such as managing a small goat’s milk yogurt operation.
Afghanistan clearly has a long way to go in achieving a solid and sustainable farm economy, but hats off to these Minnesota Guardsmen for their hard work and dedication to improve life in that terribly troubled region.