BLACKFIVE: Roundtable: Farming in Iraq

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Roundtable: Farming in Iraq

Posted By Grim

We had an interesting conversation with Col. Garrett (transcript here), who mentioned in passing during his opening statement that his unit operated in a lot of agricultural country in Iraq. We've all heard a great deal about the state of the industrial economy in Iraq, and power generation, satellite dishes, and so forth; but I don't remember reading much about the farming community.

That interested me, coming as I do from cattle and timberland country. So I asked him about it.

COL. GARRETT: I'll give you my sense. We're in a fairly rural area and agriculture and agribusiness, you know, is I think the number one employer for most of, you know, this portion of Iraq. And our battle space is interesting in that, you know, we are on the Euphrates River Valley and just to the south and west of the Tigris, and as you fly for instance from Baghdad through our battle space down to Najaf, I mean you really are flying over the Fertile Crescent. I mean, it really is amazing that, you know, in this very arid country the portion that we operate in looks like it could be somewhere in the Midwest of the United States.

My sense in looking back at historical documents, we still have not -- and historical documents and listening to some of the farmers -- we still are not at the levels, I don't think, in terms of production, you know, during the Saddam era. And I say that for two reasons: one, because every farmer that I talked to and the feedback that I get from our agricultural unions is that, you know, in some instances, we're able to farm -- you know, we're getting the, you know, two to three growing seasons a year -- but it's the distribution, you know, being able to distribute their products and produce throughout Iraq.

And then, you know, there are some challenges where some of the things that are being imported into Iraq, which is taking away some of the business from the farmers. But there are also, you know, good news stories....

You know, the other piece with agriculture, as I said before, you know, we're looking for opportunities to engage and identify local leaders. And before the concerned citizen program started, you know, in the areas where we had no real leadership, no governmental leadership, like Arab Jabour, Dayara, Muayla (sp) and a couple of other locations that were outside of our population centers, you know, the big organizations, the organizations that allowed us to bring people together were agricultural unions. There was a time up in Arab Jabour, for instance, just south of Baghdad, where we started with, you know, 80, 90 folks. That organization grew into 2,500 folks. And with the introduction of the EPRT access to experts -- agricultural experts -- we've been able to do some education, we've had reachback, and really a capacity here on my staff that we didn't have before.

The colonel didn't know if the cheap agricultural imports were coming in any special quantity from Iran; we've heard in the past at the Roundtables that Iran seems to be sending a lot of cheap industrial goods to Iraq, which in the absence of tariffs is depressing the rebound of Iraq's industry somewhat. Whether that is also happening in the agricultural sector -- or if it's an intentional policy, rather than simply the accumulation of market decisions by Iranian farmers/merchants -- is not clear.

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September 10, 2007 • Permalink
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Comments

That interested me, coming as I do from cattle and timberland country. So I asked him about it.

COL. GARRETT: I'll give you my sense. We're in a fairly rural area and agriculture and agribusiness, you know, is I think the number one employer for most of, you know, this portion of Iraq. And our battle space is interesting in that, you know, we are on the Euphrates River Valley and just to the south and west of the Tigris, and as you fly for instance from Baghdad through our battle space down to Najaf, I mean you really are flying over the Fertile Crescent. I mean, it really is amazing that, you know, in this very arid country the portion that we operate in looks like it could be somewhere in the Midwest of the United States.

My sense in looking back at historical documents, we still have not -- and historical documents and listening to some of the farmers -- we still are not at the levels, I don't think, in terms of production, you know, during the Saddam era. And I say that for two reasons: one, because every farmer that I talked to and the feedback that I get from our agricultural unions is that, you know, in some instances, we're able to farm -- you know, we're getting the, you know, two to three growing seasons a year -- but it's the distribution, you know, being able to distribute their products and produce throughout Iraq.

And then, you know, there are some challenges where some of the things that are being imported into Iraq, which is taking away some of the business from the farmers. But there are also, you know, good news stories....

You know, the other piece with agriculture, as I said before, you know, we're looking for opportunities to engage and identify local leaders. And before the concerned citizen program started, you know, in the areas where we had no real leadership, no governmental leadership, like Arab Jabour, Dayara, Muayla (sp) and a couple of other locations that were outside of our population centers, you know, the big organizations, the organizations that allowed us to bring people together were agricultural unions. There was a time up in Arab Jabour, for instance, just south of Baghdad, where we started with, you know, 80, 90 folks. That organization grew into 2,500 folks. And with the introduction of the EPRT access to experts -- agricultural experts -- we've been able to do some education, we've had reachback, and really a capacity here on my staff that we didn't have before.

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