Agribusiness Development Teams in Afghanistan

<p>Agriculture accounts for 45 percent of Afghanistan's gross domestic product and is the main source of income for the Afghan economy. Over 80 percent of the Afghan population is involved in farming herding or both. However decades of war drought and security challenges have devastated the country's agricultural sector and the current level of U.S. government civilian support has been unable to keep pace with the tremendous need for assistance in this region. Revitalizing Afghanistan's agricultural sector is critical to building the government's capacity and to stabilizing the country. In 2007 the Secretary of the Army Pete Geren; Director of the Army National Guard Lieutenant General Clyde Vaughn; Missouri Farm Bureau President Charles Kruse; and the Adjutant General of the Missouri National Guard Major General King Sidwell developed an idea to deploy Soldiers with agricultural expertise and organic security capabilities to Afghanistan. They realized the development of Afghanistan's agriculture and agricultural products distribution capabilities was vital to long-term economic development and that governmental civilians (United States Afghanistan and other countries) and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) were not resourced for the massive amount of work necessary in these areas as well as for the security they required.</p><p>This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore you will see the original copyright references library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world) and other notations in the work.</p><p>This work is in the public domain in the United States of America and possibly other nations. Within the United States you may freely copy and distribute this work as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.</p><p>As a reproduction of a historical artifact this work may contain missing or blurred pages poor pictures errant marks etc. Scholars believe and we concur that this work is important enough to be preserved reproduced and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.</p><br>