Local Man Says Agriculture Is Recovery Key In Iraq

A Washington County, Va., man working in Iraq says agriculture is the key to a lasting peace after five years of war, and for the country to achieve stability, U.S. forces will need to stay at least another five years.

"The more people we get back on the farms working, the less people will have guns in their hands," Mark Mitchell said in a telephone interview from Baghdad. "It’s just that simple."

Mitchell, an economic development consultant working with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, said Iraqi farmers are producing about 30 percent of their nation’s food needs. He said they could be producing 75 percent – and it could be achieved in five years.

"All the irrigation systems have been damaged by 20 years of neglect. Saddam [Hussein] would build [military] tanks, but he wouldn’t replace water pumps for farmers," Mitchell said. "Once we get all that repaired, that’ll probably get them way back up there for sufficiency issues."

The picture Mitchell paints of the war in Iraq is very different from that described by anti-war protesters here in the U.S. He said the majority of the country is stable enough for an international group of economic development workers to assist farmers, and many are helping directly in rural Iraq.

"For example, right now I’m writing up a plan for how to work something very similar to a Southern States [Co-op], where a farmer can go in and buy all his seed and fertilizer on credit, and then rather than having to go to a bank and take out a loan, he just makes monthly payments to a farm cooperative," Mitchell said.

He said Iraqis have a strong sense of responsibility to care for their families. If they can’t make a living on the farm, they head to cities, and that’s where they are sometimes offered money to plant bombs. Many risk their lives not for political goals, but simply to provide for their families, he said.

"The average person here, they want to sit down and have their bread, and they like smoked fish," Mitchell said. "There’s no different from us. We want to sit down and have barbecue and beer."

He said a team from around the world is working to rebuild Iraq’s agriculture and restructure programs – like ag extensions and the gathering of statistics – that will keep the economy on a path to recovery in a country where 60 percent of employment is in agriculture.

They’re also providing direct assistance – like tomato seeds for 5,000 farmers in southern Iraq to replant after losing most of their crops to frost. U.S. officials hope the $20,000 investment will encourage the people to farm rather than fight.

"It’s just part of this congressional budget you hear about all the time. Not all of that goes to war. It goes to pay bulldozers to push mud out of rivers and to replace pumps and things like that," Mitchell said. "That includes, if you think about the new Farmers’ Market there in Abingdon, we’re building several of those around here."

Raised on a farm in Rich Valley, Mitchell said he brings practical experience to the job, advising Iraqi farmers on day-to-day issues like milk fever and getting crops harvested on time.

The big picture, he says, includes the fact that half of the Iraqi oil refining capacity is back online, meaning oil by-products can now be used for the production of fertilizer and greenhouse plastic – and the fact that the Iraqi government just approved a $500 million agriculture initiative for 2008, with advice from around the world.

"We may not have armies from all over the world here, but in yesterday’s [agricultural working group] meeting, I sat there with a British person. I sat there with a person from Romania," Mitchell said.

"I deal with a South African. I deal with a North Korean. I deal with a Japanese. Everybody’s here on an international level dealing with the economy and agriculture. They might not all be carrying guns, but they’re all here working on the economy."

U.S. Agriculture Secretary Ed Schafer spoke in a news conference last week about efforts to rebuild agriculture in Iraq.

"Even though agriculture is the second-leading industry in Iraq, that country’s agricultural resources were mismanaged and neglected for decades, and our agriculture advisors are now faced with the task of resolving a situation with overwhelming humanitarian implications," Schafer said in a USDA news release.

"This country has great potential to become a good trade partner to the United States and other countries. But first, we must address Iraq’s humanitarian needs."

Of the five-year milestone, Mitchell said, "It’s a short period of time. ... Go in and look at how long we’ve been in South Africa and providing assistance there. We’ve been there since apartheid. Go and look at Sierra Leone or look at Sudan and the whole Darfur thing. We’ve been there more than five years."

He also said that even with the war in Iraq, the number of U.S. military deaths in the last five years is right on average with where it’s been for the last two decades.

"In the last 20 years, you’ll find that we lost more people when we were not at war," Mitchell said. "I think the highest death rate we ever had, we were in no wars under Bill Clinton, and we lost over 3,000 that year. ... We lost as many soldiers to drunken driving and train accidents as anything else."

Mitchell said the U.S. presence in Iraq needs to continue so more work can be completed to get Iraq’s economy back on track. Otherwise, disaster will result.

"Right now, we have to be here. The U.S. destroyed this economy, and we’re going to have to put it back together," Mitchell said. "If we were to leave too soon, the economy would collapse here, ... A war was started, and now we have to get out of it, and leaving tomorrow is not the answer."

dmccown@bristolnews.com | (276) 791-0701