WASHINGTON -- Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said Jan. 7 he would leave shortly for Afghanistan to analyze the agriculture economy in that country and evaluate U.S. efforts to improve it.
At a State Department news conference with U.S. Agency for International Development Administrator Rajiv Shah and Richard Holbrooke, the special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, Vilsack emphasized that agriculture development is the Obama administration's No. 1 nonmilitary priority in Afghanistan, but must be led by Afghan officials.
"We will align our assistance and our help with the agricultural framework that has been recently announced by the Afghan government," Vilsack said.
Vilsack declined to provide a timetable for his trip, and Holbrooke emphasized that Afghanistan is dangerous for Vilsack and for civilians working there.
"Security is a real issue," Holbrooke noted, adding that "civilians are not in the same environment as the military. They have to get out (of the protected zone) to do their work."
ADVERTISEMENT
Assistant strategy
Vilsack said USDA has 54 people in Afghanistan, with 10 more on the way, spending a budget of $300 million in fiscal year 2009. Many, he said, are "paired" with Afghan Agriculture Ministry officials while others are working on projects ranging from improving crop productivity and export systems to saving watersheds and planting trees. Holbrooke noted that the Obama administration has shifted the strategy from poppy eradication to agricultural development. Vilsack said a hectare could generate $2,500 in sales for an Afghan farmer, but that the same hectare planted to apples could earn $3,000 to $4,000 and table grapes could earn $18,000.
'One team, one mission'
Vilsack, Shah and Holbrooke all avoided any mention of the concerns with the agencies or on Capitol Hill that USDA may be usurping USAID's traditional development role and undertaking the Afghan reconstruction effort at the expense of the USDA Foreign Agriculture Service's traditional mandate to sell U.S. products abroad.
FAS Administrator Michael Michener had been in charge of the U.S. effort, but after longtime agency officials criticized him for neglecting FAS's traditional work, Vilsack in December reassigned him to the U.S. embassy to the United Nations food agencies in Rome. Vilsack, Shah and Holbrooke instead emphasized that even though three civilian agencies -- State, USAID and USDA -- and the military are involved in the agriculture effort, they are taking a "one team, one mission" approach.
Holbrooke noted that, as a young Foreign Service officer at the U.S. embassy in Vietnam, he had found "a lot of either friction or stovepiping, and we're trying to break that down. It's one of our major bureaucratic goals."
Holbrooke said USDA and USAID personnel have been asked not to identify themselves as being employed by one agency or another. He said there is a senior official in charge of the agriculture effort, but that he could not remember which agency the official is from. Both USDA and USAID leaders report to Ambassador Tony Wayne, who is "the senior director of operations," Holbrooke said.
