AFGHANISTAN - KANDAHAR DEVELOPMENT

GQB has been working with USAID and the British Royal Air Force Regiment (a special force protection unit) around Kandahar Airfield (KAF) in the south of Afghanistan. The aim of the project is to develop a supply of fresh fruit and vegetables from the area surrounding this major ISAF-NATO base and at the same time influence the farmers away from the Taliban by providing inputs, cleaning irrigation ditches and generally helping with the development of the area.

The photo is taken at the Tarnak Agricultural Research station that before 2002 was a location for Al Qaeda - allegedly Usama Bin Laden had a house here. Now its an intensively and commercially farmed area with watermelons (shown growing here) and grapes. The area also grows a range of other fruits and veggies and is ripe for further development, both for the 30,000 people on KAF, the local market and export.

AFGHANISTAN - POMEGRANATE DEVELOPMENT

Pomegranates are the main tree crop in the Arghandab Valley just west of Kandahar City in the South of Afghanistan. KC is the focus of a coming surge to try and strangle the Taliban and the AVIPA+ project (managed by International Relief & Development with whom Geoff Q-B and Eddie Vernon are working at present) has made a real effort to help farmers by planting new saplings in an effort to rehabilitate plantations and increase earnings. The project has operated in three phases, first with a cash-for-work scheme to prune the existing trees, then by replanting with pomegranates, plums and apricots, and then undertaking an IPM program. What's expected is a huge surge in yields and output, so AVIPA+ hopes to help with the construction of packing houses and upgrading the marketing chain. The hoped for result is a calming of the insurgency because happy farmers are less likely to support the radical opposition.

Photo: Andy Burridge

AFGHANISTAN - STABILISATION PROJECT SOUTH

Geoff Q-Bastin and Eddie Vernon are working on contract with the AVIPA+ project in south Afghanistan, based in Kandahar. The project is managed for USAID by the leading American 'not for profit' company International Relief and Development (IRD). IRD has a major presence in Afghanistan and is the most successful USAID NGO contractor operating in-country maintaining a presence in the volatile south of the country despite continuous threats and attacks on its personnel. The company tragically lost three of its expatriate staff in the recent air crash at the Salang Pass.

Operating in the fertile Sistan River Basin (comprising the Helmand and Arghandab Valleys), the AVIPA+ project ($300+ million - the acronym stands for Afghan Vouchers for Increased Productivity in Agriculture) is a civil-military so-called COIN (counter-insurgency) innovative effort to stabilise communities by working with farmers to support their livelihoods. The project has various components including cash-for-work (CFW - such as pruning fruit trees or cleaning irrigation canals), small grants (e.g., for tractors) and voucher packages that provide a mix of vegetable seeds, tools and fertilizers as well as distribute fruit tree saplings.

The AVIPA+ project has been hugely successful with one military commander saying that it has substantially reduced casualties. In addition it has improved farmer's incomes through increased yields; fruit tree yields increased by as much as 30%. The project will transition into a more traditional development phase over a planned 5 year period as the security situation improves.

Photo: the fertile Arghandab Valley from the air looking north; notice the irrigation channel to the right of the photo on the outskirts of Kandahar City which is fed from the Arghandab (Dahla) Dam in the uplands of the Hindu Kush. This is a massive irrigation system that provides water for one of the potentially (and historically) most productive areas of agriculture in the world.

For more personal reflections on Afghanistan, check out Geoff's travel blog on www.travelblog.org/bloggers/quartermainesworld

IRD is at www.ird.org

FOOD AID IN AFGHANISTAN

Geoff Q-B is in Kabul working as a senior advisor to the 'AVIPA Plus Program' being run by International Relief & Development (IRD) for USAID. "AVIPA Plus" stands for Afghanistan Vouchers for Increased Productive Agriculture" and more information can be found on it on the IRD web site at http://www.ird.org.

Briefly, however, the project has distributed vouchers for certified wheat seed and fertilizer (Urea and DAP) to subsistence farmers throughout the growing area. 47,000 hectares of land (irrigated and rain fed) have been covered with substantial yield increases. Jobs have been created and improvements made in the value chain.

The challenge now is to extend the project into other areas and other sub-sectors of agriculture.