MISSOURI GUARDSMEN LEAD AGRICULTURAL INVASION EFFORT

WASHINGTON - Capt. Doug Dunlap and Master Sgt. Jim Schulte are
battle-hardened Missouri National Guard veterans with tours of duty in
Iraq and Afghanistan behind them.

But both returned a few weeks ago from a quite different type of
mission, having used their other area of expertise - as Missouri farmers.

Dunlap and Schulte are involved in the early phase of an American
effort to turn around Afghanistan's struggling agricultural sector,
which employs about 80 percent of the nation's people.

The dominant crop in Afghanistan is opium-producing poppies that have
fueled the world's drug trade.

The program aims to help

Afghan farmers growing traditional crops - which include apricots,
eggplants and pomegranates - through cold storage, better irrigation,
high-quality

seeds and modern planting techniques. It also aims to ween others from
growing poppy by showing that traditional crops can be profitable.

Dunlap and Schulte were startled by what they encountered when they
were carrying shovels instead of rifles.

For Dunlap, the most moving moment was the sheer joy that spread
across the face of an elderly Afghan farmer upon learning the simple
technique of staking his plants to keep tomatoes from falling to the
ground and rotting. Several generations of the man's family gathered
around as he proudly demonstrated the "new" trick.

Schulte witnessed a different kind of pride among religious leaders,
farmers and local officials who assured him at every turn that they
didn't want a handout, simply assistance in building a self-sufficient
agricultural sector.

"They have mostly 15th-or 16th-century technology," Schulte said.
"They're plowing fields with one-row, ox-drawn wooden plows. When we
talked about the future, they said, 'We need your support and your
guidance; we'll provide the work.'"

Cantaloupes the size of watermelons - an Afghan staple - also
impressed the men, but overplanted corn that yielded too little stock
did not.

Along with the Missouri National Guard, the Missouri Farm Bureau is
involved, and the University of Missouri's College of Agriculture has
agreed to lend its expertise.

Afghanistan once was a breadbasket for South Asia, and a major
exporter of exotic fruits, nuts and dried fruit, before 30 years of
Soviet occupation and civil war, destruction and neglect of the
agricultural infrastructure. A seven-year drought that ended in 2005
made things even worse.

The National Guard Bureau in Washington has chosen the Missouri
National Guard to run the pilot effort, which is taking place in the
eastern Afghan province of Nangarhar. Its lush soil and the presence
of the Kabul River make it a potentially fertile area.

If Missouri's pilot program succeeds, military and political officials
in Washington say it will be replicated across Afghanistan by National
Guard units from other states, tailored to specific Afghan provinces
partly by climate. For example, the National Guard in arid states such
as Arizona, New Mexico or Nevada would be sent to the desertlike parts
of Afghanistan, while soldiers in Colorado could be deployed in
mountainous sections of the country.

"A lot rests on the shoulders of our team," said Missouri National
Guard spokeswoman Capt. Tammy Spicer. "We're pretty excited to be the
first on this."

Missouri was chosen to lead the program for several reasons: the
farming background of many of its Guard troops, the similarity of
Missouri's climate and soil to some of the most fertile Afghan
provinces and the Missouri roots of the director of the Army National
Guard in Washington, Lt. Gen. Clyde Vaughn.

FIRST TRIP

The fledgling effort's first trip to Afghanistan, in February, was
basically a "reconnaissance mission," says Paul LePage, a board member
of the Missouri Farm Bureau and retired command master sergeant in the
Army Reserves who has a farm along the Missouri River outside
Jefferson City. He spent two weeks in Kandahar Province with Vaughn
and Maj. Gen. King Sidwell of the Missouri National Guard.

"We went over there to see what it looked like on the ground and maybe
get some ideas and communicate with a few of the locals over there,
get their thoughts and see if there really was any possibility to do
what Gen. Vaughn had in mind to lure those Afghan farmers into raising
something other than poppy," LePage said. "People in that country are
actually starving. Their supply of food is really short. They have no
grocery stores."

Kandahar, where Osama bin Laden planned the terrorist attacks of Sept.
11, 2001, is a volatile region with a violent insurgency and thriving
narcotics trade.

Missouri's program was subsequently shifted to Nangarhar, on the
eastern Afghan border with Pakistan. The province, which is more
secure, also more closely mirrors the growing conditions in Missouri.

Schulte, a Florissant native, owns 25 acres between Jefferson City and
Fulton. A 35-year National Guard veteran, he served in 2005 as an
embedded trainer with the Afghan National Army, and now works in
plans, operations and training at Guard headquarters in Jefferson City.

Dunlap's farm experience began as a youngster in his family's farming
business in Poplar Bluff; he also has a degree in agricultural
economics from the University of Missouri. He commanded a unit in Iraq
in 2005.

To serve as executive officer for the new Agri-business Development
Team, he has taken a leave from his job as a branch president for
three rural banks.

OUTMODED WAYS

During their 10-day trip, the two men saw Afghan farmers struggling to
survive without the most rudimentary infrastructure.

When the harvest comes ripe, with the roads so poor and no cold
storage available, farmers sell what they can locally - and then
Pakistanis cross the border and buy the rest cheaply.

"Then four months later, they sell it back to the same people and
charge four times as much as they paid for it," Dunlap said.

Providing cold storage would alleviate that problem, but without
available electricity, the Guard is looking into low-tech options,
such as caves or root-cellars in homes. Unprotected produce wilts and
rots quickly in the blistering sun, he said.

Also critical is improving the ancient irrigation system for the long
valley where Nangarhar's farms are located.

"It was 120 degrees while we were on the ground," Dunlap said. "If the
ground's not irrigated, after about a week it turns back to desert."

He described how farmers spend 15 or 20 minutes to dig a hole to
release water from the dam, then let it flood their small fields via a
system of small ditches and canals.

"They manipulate the water with shovels. They will stand out there
with their shovels and hoes and make sure the water gets to each
individual plant in the paddock, then fill in the hole in the levy
with their shovel, and go to the next little half-acre or acre,"
Dunlap said.

TARGETING TALIBAN

The full 50-member Missouri team is expected to be deployed early next
year.

Sen. Christopher "Kit" Bond, R-Mo., said previous U.S. efforts to
improve agriculture have largely failed.

"Our nation's National Guard, however, is uniquely positioned to lend
the skills and talents of its citizen soldiers - from agriculture,
agribusiness and engineering - to help the Afghans rebuild their
society," Bond said.

Marc Linit, associate dean of the University of Missouri's College of
Agriculture, says that he will be briefed in a few days by the
Missouri National Guard and that the college will provide its
expertise as requested.

"I really believe that if we can reduce the poppy level, we're taking
funding away from al-Qaida and the Taliban," the farm bureau's LePage
said. "That's where they get their bucks. If this thing works like I
think it can work, we're going to save a lot of bullets. We're not
going to whip them in those mountains with bullets, but I do believe
this - if the people of Afghanistan can raise enough food, feed those
people better than they're being fed right now, I think we'll have
great friends there."