DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) -- The Iowa National Guard is getting ready to send a 60-person agribusiness team to Afghanistan to help rebuild the farm-based economy and increase crop production.


The military began sending such teams to Afghanistan in early 2008.
The Iowa team will deploy in June and will arrive in northeast Afghanistan in early August on a one-year deployment. The mission will occur as the Iowa Guard deploys a 3,500-member combat force.


In a conference call Monday, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack claimed Afghans are learning there are advantages to growing legitimate crops, such as wheat, instead of poppies for the opium trade


Vilsack says the goal isn't to turn Afghanistan "into an Iowa cornfield," but to help the Afghans grow stable crops with their limited resources.




Iowa National Guard team to help Afghan farmers (http://www.siouxcityjournal.com/news/state-and-regional/iowa/article_72f45524-5151-11df-b50c-001cc4c03286.html)

drug crops that is

If only you guys knew how much sh**t this country is in .. See we are not exactly in a position to say if these projects are to our taste or not..Anything in Afghanistan that helps even one farmer raise even a chunk of his crop opium free is good for this country

^ that's a blind rhetoric..we need to open up to ideas and opportunities, even if those people are our enemies..let's keep business strictly business

Its hard to keep business strictly business when we are not in charge of our own affairs.

No one has stopped us, it's our own shortsightedness..no one here has bothered to explain how this will benefit the US ?

I don't support foreign aid or efforts, but there is nothing else to do when we are unable to produce even the tiniest bit of entrepreneurship and to hide our inability we have a million excuses