ROOTS OF PEACE RESTORES AGRICULTURE IN AFGHANISTAN

JANUARY 16, 2009—KABUL, AFGHANISTAN—Roots of Peace (RoP), a California-based non-profit organization, has successfully implemented agricultural programs helping more than 100,000 farmers to rebuild their farm enterprises, growing food crops to feed their families and for export. “RoP is the premier international horticultural specialist working with us in Afghanistan” says Adela Bakhtiari, Director of Horticulture for the Afghan Ministry of Agriculture, Irrigation and Livestock. “We would like to see their effective programs replicated throughout our 32 provinces across Afghanistan.”

RoP, which initiated its Afghanistan programs in 2001, receives funding from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), U.S. Department of State, the Asian Development Bank, the European Union, and the World Bank to remove minefields and restore vineyards and orchards in this nation once known as “The Garden of Central Asia.” RoP has partnered with the University of California Davis and other international agricultural experts to bring modern but simple agricultural practices to Afghan farmers. Its successful programs are now being replicated by other international organizations in a collective effort to increase farm income in a country where 80% of the population is dependent on small-scale farming for their livelihoods. Roots of Peace also has a program, the ROP Penny Campaign, which has raised over 25 million American pennies to build schools and soccer fields in Afghanistan.

GRAPES: RoP assists grape producers with the simple but forgotten practice of trellising their vineyards which lifts the grapes off the ground and into the sun. Knowing that farmers who invest their own money in a project are more likely to succeed, RoP has targeted farmers who are willing to pay a portion of the cost of installing trellises on their vineyards. The response to the program has been tremendous. In the first year, only ten farmers participated in the program. In the second year, more than a thousand signed up to participate; exceeding the number RoP could serve. The second year USAID put $100,000 into the program. Follow these successes, the World Bank is putting $1,000,000 and the US Department of Defense is putting $800,000 into trellising programs modeled after RoP’s. Farmers easily see that trellising greatly increases the amount of high-quality table grapes they can produce per acre. With the right conditions, many farmers have doubled their income the year after installing the trellises, making significantly more money per hectare than they can with any other crop including poppies.

ORCHARDS: RoP is importing over 50,000 orange saplings from California as a first step in rebuilding the Eastern Afghan citrus orchards destroyed during decades of war. This is part of more than 7,000 acres of new fruit and nut orchards being established in Eastern Afghanistan by small-scale farmers with help from USAID, funneled through RoP. In Northeast Afghanistan, RoP and local farmers have established 93 nurseries and 1,098 small-scale commercial orchards since 2007. This gift will continue supplying high-quality, highly productive trees to support the expansion of Afghanistan’s tree crops for years to come.

WOMEN & WALNUTS: Thanks to a USAID-funded program implemented by RoP in 2006-2008, women in a small community in Afghanistan’s northeastern province of Badakhshan are finding part-time employment processing walnuts in a new walnut purchasing and processing center built partially with U.S. funds and partially with funds invested by a Kabul business. This is probably the first outside-the-home job most of these women have ever had, adding to their families’ incomes and increasing the value of the walnuts produced on their family’s trees. This and other marketing efforts provide the monetary incentives for the families of these women and their neighbors to plant the improved-performance walnut, apricot, almond and cherry trees that local tree nurseries are producing with assistance from RoP. More than 80,000 trees were planted in 2008 with another 80,000 ready for planting in 2009. The combination of production and marketing efforts will assure the sustainable development of this tree-based industry.

FRUIT/NUT PROCESSING, PACKAGING & MARKETING: RoP established the first cold chain in Afghanistan in 2005 to maintain the shelf life of fresh grapes, melons and pomegranates exported to neighboring countries India and Pakistan and began testing trade routes to Dubai, Germany, Russia and Ukraine. In the initial year of export trials (2005), 100 metric tons of chilled grapes were exported.

RoP looks forward to continuing its work in Afghanistan, promoting good relations between America and the Afghan people. For additional information about its programs in Afghanistan and elsewhere, please visit www.rootsofpeace.org.

Roots of Peace Founder and CEO Heidi Kuhn presenting pomegranates to President Hamid Karzai in October 2006.

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