USA, CANADA GOOD PARTNERS

We're given frequent reminders that the United States and Canada can be
pretty scrappy competitors when both are going after the same markets for
their ag products.

What's often overlooked in the charges and counter charges of international
trade is that the two agricultural giants sharing much of North America are
still pretty good partners.

It was, for instance, not one but both who came forward with $12 million to
get agriculture back to feeding the hungry, propping up the economy and
returning willing farmers to productive enterprise in Afghanistan.

Furthermore, they agreed on how to go about it. They committed their finest
science to the cause. They put the first big money in the pot, then
challenged other agricultural countries to join in.

Like much of the rest of the country, Afghan agriculture is crippled beyond
recognition by a succession of wars, each seeming to come hard on the heels
of the one just ended. The trend continues even as the United States and
its allies phase down their operations after striking back in the war on
terrorism. Now regional struggles of domestic warlords and their followers
move into the void left by departing foreign powers.

Afghan farmers have turned increasingly to opium poppies. To a great
extent, they'd quit growing the drug under pressure at home and abroad.
They replaced it with more wholesome crops.

But the series of wars destroyed marketing structures, technical
installations and the crops themselves, along with the fields that produced
them. Now Afghan farmers are saying the only way they can make a living is
to go back to poppies.

The U.S. and Canadian initiative becomes all the greater when considering
the factors that drive Afghan farming. A nation is starving while its
farmers can find nothing profitable to grow except a drug that does
extensive damage throughout the world.

Restoration takes money. The $12 million ante for a worthwhile gamble is a
start. But good science is just as important. North American ag scientists
intend to keep the focus on sensible approaches. No point in sending
Afghanistan agriculture into the vagaries of global marketing when
nourishing foods are desperately needed right at home.

To get them, irrigation must be rebuilt, seed stocks replenished and basic
agricultural implements supplied. The emphasis on crops is to be based on
local necessities. Thus the thrust of the effort is to feed the nation
community by community, provide farmers with an operating margin and
rebuild regional economies that simply have been wiped out.

The bid to rebuild Afghan agriculture won't be very flashy. It's down to
the basics. The United States and Canada probably will attract a lot more
attention with their differences in competing for markets.

But their partnership to give Afghanistan back its own functioning farming
will probably be a lot more satisfying in the long run.