LITTLE ROCK — Another team of Arkansas National Guardsmen is headed to Afghanistan for a year, with deployment scheduled for late winter.
The National Guard Bureau picked Arkansas as a source for an Agricultural Development Team, a 2-year-old program where team members teach Afghan growers better farming, cropstorage and marketing practices to sway them away from poppy production.
Afghanistan is the top producer of poppies used to make heroin.
Several states, including Missouri and Tennessee, have deployed 58-member development teams of agricultural and security experts.
There are six teams around the nation, with several deploying more than once. More than 540 National Guard soldiers have previously deployed on this mission. Currently, 344 guardsmen are in Afghanistan working on agricultural development teams.
The Arkansas National Guard received approval this week to start building its own team.
"This is very much like the route clearance mission, it has a very short fuse," said Col. Don Cronkhite, Arkansas National Guard's deputy chief of staff for operations.
A 200-soldier route clearance team of engineers from Arkansas' 875th Combat Engineer Battalion received a mobilization order this summer to deploy to Afghanistan in January where they'll clear bombs along supply routes. The team will mobilize in November for training under the designation of the 1037th Engineer Company.
The agriculture team is being built slowly and deliberately because of the specialized nature of the mission.
"The guidance from the adjutant general is that this team will be 100 percent volunteer," Cronkhite said.
More than 350 soldiers and airmen have already volunteered to join the team.
The majority of the 58-member team will be made up of security forces to protect the 16 soldiers or airmen who will be working as agricultural specialists with Afghan farmers.
The team is being built around the agricultural needs of the region.
Team members will be working north of Kandahar in southern Afghanistan along the Karnac River basin.
"The bottom line is you need to do a regional assessment of that area. We're not just training them how to grow crops, we're also teaching them how to store and market them," said Lt. Col. Ronnie Anderson, mobilization and readiness officer for the Arkansas National Guard. "We're looking for the kids with the dirt under their fingers."
Even the security forces will have agricultural backgrounds, Anderson said.
"I am very excited about this mission because I think this mission has the potential to improve the lives of the people of Afghanistan," said Lt. Col. Steve Redman, the agricultural team's commander. "And you can see how it fits into the big picture, too."
Agricultural Development Teams operate as part of a brigade-sized Provincial Reconstruction Team and are responsible for specific areas of agricultural development.
Col. Martin Leppert, agricultural development team coordinator with the National Guard Bureau, said the teams partner with agriculture colleges in their home states to help troubleshoot agricultural issues and ideas.
"At one point, Afghanistan was a net exporter of grains, dried spices, fruits, vegetables and nuts," Leppert said. "Green raisins, apricots, pears, apples. Things that we take for granted here, that just show up at our stores, they have to fight every day to get them to market."
Decades of war stopped most trade and agricultural advances in the rugged nation.
A focus for the Arkansas team - which is headed to an area where agriculture teams have not yet worked - will be teaching water-management skills. In addition, teaching proper slaughtering techniques and various uses for animal byproducts as well as how to maximize production of crops are all goals for the team.
"Education is number one, the most important task," he said.
Setting up a trading network is next.
"The average Afghan farmer is being leveraged by warlords to grow poppy for them. It's important that we make a difference in their lives over and above the average poppy grower," Leppert said.
The agriculture teams don't compete with poppy growers, but target farmers who are not yet in the poppy business. Leppert said the goal is that when they see their neighbors making more money growing a variety of crops and livestock, poppy farmers will want to give up the poppy business. He said he hopes the program will keep young men from working for the Taliban as a way to feed their families.
"That keeps the jobs in Afghanistan that keep the young man employed," Leppert said. "It gives them hope and a reason to get up in the morning rather than something that is quick, dirty and evil."
Front Section, Pages 1, 2 on 09/21/2009