Guard Unit Works with Afghan Farmers, Beekeepers

Twelve Tennessee farmers are among the first wave of Americans working to restart Afghanistan’s once-thriving agricultural economy.

They’re members of an agribusiness unit of the Tennessee Army National Guard, and these days they’re focused on apple trees and the bees that pollinate them.

Apples were once a major export for Afghanistan. Thirty years of fighting decimated the nation’s orchards. Many of the farmers fled or died. And the Taliban encouraged growth of different crops: poppies for making opium and cannabis for hashish.

The Taliban sells the illicit drugs at a high profit, but Sgt. Bob Moore says the farmers don’t make any more than they would from apples.

“If we can provide them with long-term, sustainable crops, then we can very easily replace the poppies and the hashish.”

Moore and his men are bringing in seedlings and teaching Afghanis the details of apple production that had been forgotten.

Sgt. Bob Moore and an Afghani beekeeper

They’re also helping Afghani women learn how to be beekeepers. Moore says a third of the crops grown in the country, including apples, depend on bees for pollination. And because the honey they produce can be sold, the hives become a source of income and independence for the women.

web extra:

The bulk of the 63-member unit are security and support forces.

Moore says response from farmers varies from place to place according to the extent of Taliban influence there. Taliban members sometimes visit farms at night to discourage those men from working with Americans. They’ve also rocketed the guard unit and set explosive devices in their path.

Because all of the unit’s agricultural experts are male, they cannot communicate directly with Afghan women. They are instead working with the local beekeepers association, which they hope to more than sextuple in size. Those who go through the training are given a hive and colony of bees upon completion.

Moore emphasizes that all of the unit’s efforts are focused on putting an infrastructure in place that the Afghanis will be able to sustain once the troops are gone. In contrast, he says the Taliban’s agricultural assistance takes the form of seed and fertilizer. The cost of those items is then deducted from the crop’s sale price when the Taliban buy the flowers and leaves for drug production.