TARGET: OPIUM

Missouri National Guard: Soldier-Farmers Will Help Afghanistan
Replace Poppy Crops With Show-me State Know-How

LAKE OF THE OZARKS - A few Missouri National Guardsmen will be using
their agriculture backgrounds in unexpected ways and places.

A newly formed platoon will head to Afghanistan by next year, armed
with what life on a Missouri farm taught them.

Their mission: implement new farming techniques and give new ideas to
decades-old problems.

Opium poppy field crops are the largest cash crop in Afghanistan,
according to the United Nations.

The illegal crop is worth more than all of the food crops combined
with more than 3.3 million Afghans involved in producing opium. The
UN believes while most farmers do not have ties to the Taliban, the
$3 billion drug trade funds its fighters.

Ninety-five percent of the world's supply of opium comes from
Afghanistan. That figure rose 3 percent in 2007 from 2006, the UN reported.

Opium contains morphine. It is also used to produce the highly
addictive street drug heroin.

Needing an out-of-the-box solution to an out-of-the-box problem, an
agri-business development team was formed, said Army National Guard
Lt. General Clyde Vaughn during a presentation Monday at the annual
Missouri Farm Bureau meeting at Tan-Tar-A Resort in Osage Beach.

The ADT was formed as a joint effort between the National Guard,
Missouri Farm Bureau, University of Missouri, Lincoln University,
College of the Ozarks and the National Guard Bureau.

Much of the world overcame the problems farmers in Afghanistan
continue to face with the First Industrial Revolution in the 1800s.

The group will help catch them up with this first-of-its-kind
program, Vaughn said.

The 50-member group will be armed with designs for horse-drawn steel
plows, plans to improve irrigation systems, techniques for
fertilizing, planting and harvesting, tips on crop rotation and soil
use and ideas to build root cellars and utilize caves to store fruits
and vegetables.

The ideas may seem rudimentary, but many poor, rural farmers don't
know, he said. Catching them up to the 1800s will help.

The focus will start in Nangarhar Province in eastern Afghanistan.

According to the UN, opium poppy cultivation increased in that
province by 285 percent in 2007 compared to 2006. The province was
almost poppy-free in 2005 as a result of education and
self-restriction by farmers.

Vaughn said the province shows the most promise of being helped by
the new program. Once the ADT gains a foothold there, the new farming
techniques have a better chance of spreading to other parts of the country.

Missouri Sen. Kit Bond also spoke at the Farm Bureau meeting.

He said opportunities such as this would give Afghan farmers the
means of an honest earning using Missouri know-how. And less opium
would benefit everybody.

The program is still in its infancy. Several leading members of the
group visited Afghanistan earlier this year and are mapping out a
plan for a return visit with the rest of the platoon.