Nursery of hope — trading opium for orchards
By Rick Steigmeyer World staff writer
WENATCHEE — Jim Du Bruille thinks it’s best to help in a place where he can do the most good. That place is Afghanistan, a war-ravaged country in the throes of a new democracy, and Du Bruille hopes, a new economy based on growing fruit and vegetables, rather than opium poppies.
The Wenatchee Valley College instructor recently returned to Wenatchee on a one-month break from his second year of work as an agricultural consultant in Nangarhar, an eastern province that has managed to survive through decades of war on a centuries-old economy based on opium poppies. He alternates three months of work in Afghanistan with one month at home in Wenatchee.
Du Bruille, 51, is working with the International Foundation of Hope, a nongovernmental organization that was founded by James Ritchie, a Mattawa-residing millionaire who maintains a business office in Wenatchee to oversee a couple thousand acres of agricultural ventures in the Columbia Basin. The two men met in Wenatchee in 1993, discovered they both had a love for Afghanistan, and began traveling there together in 1994. Du Bruille is conversant in Pashto, one of Afghanistan’s two main languages. Ritchie financed a well-documented attempt to rid the country of its Taliban regime in 2001.
IFHope is funded through five U.S. Agency for International Development grants and one European Union grant totaling about $2.2 million, Du Bruille said. Its mission is twofold: to help develop democratic community leadership and to improve the economy through agriculture.
The grants are not a lot of money, he said, compared to the billions in aid and weapons the United States gave Afghani warlords in the 1980s to help push the Soviets out of the country.
The Soviets withdrew from their 10-year occupation of Afghanistan in 1989. U.S. aid also disappeared, leaving the country’s infrastructure and economy demolished. The well-armed warlords, however, continued to fight for territorial control that brought more destruction and bloodshed, he said. The civil war left the door open for the Islamic fundamentalist Taliban to take control with promises of moral and economic relief. The country suffered further destruction when the U.S. started its attacks to remove the Taliban after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York City.
To say the country is war-ravaged is an understatement, said Du Bruille. Few people have electricity or telephones. The road between Kabul, Afghanistan’s capital, and Jalalabad, the capital of Nangarhar where Du Bruille works, is only about 80 miles. But the road was so obliterated from tank tracks and bombings, the trip took nine hours to make when he visited in 2002.
“The road is much better now. It only takes four or five hours,” he said. Du Bruille said he believes the United States owes the country some lasting economic development.
“I think we’ve learned the consequences of walking away in 1989,” he said. “The forces there now are trying to keep a semblance of security. It’s appreciated by the people. We’re doing the right thing there this time, but it will take a long commitment.”
Du Bruille’s work over the past year has included refurbishing the main irrigation canal that brings water 44 miles from the Kabul River to Nangarhar, one of the country’s most productive agricultural areas. The canal, originally built by the Soviets, irrigates about 60,000 acres. Thousands of acres of citrus groves were cut down for firewood during the wars.
Du Bruille hopes to help expand the irrigation district to 150,000 acres of vegetable, fruit and nut crops. A nursery with more than two million fruit and nut trees is already going. Some of the young fruit trees came from Wenatchee. Afghan farmers have already planted more than 100,000 trees, including apples, apricots, cherries, oranges, almonds, pomegranate, guava and persimmons, he said.
The farmers are being taught to grow vegetable crops between the orchard rows so they will have an annual cash crop and food during the three to four-year period it will take the trees to produce a profitable crop. IFHope offers trees, fertilizer and consulting.
But the work of convincing farmers to grow fruit and vegetables rather than poppies is a challenge. Opium is fast money for farmers who, after years of war, have little faith in the future. Under Taliban rule, the opium trade was eradicated. Since the Taliban was pushed out, it has once again flourished, as it had previously for 5,000 years, Du Bruille said.
“Last year it was wall to wall poppies,” he said.
For farmers, the decision of what to grow is purely economic. Wheat returns about $200 an acre. Poppies can return $5,000 an acre. Last year’s Afghanistan poppy crop accounted for three-quarters of the world’s supply, according to a United Nations report.
But things have changed this year. The new U.S.-supported Afghan government has begun its own march to destroy poppy fields and penalize farmers for growing the crop. The move is not a popular one with farmers, but now there is an option, Du Bruille said.
“We figure it gives us a three-year window,” he said, referring to the length of time it will take trees to produce a crop and prove their worth. “It’s important to get in there with alternative crops.”
The tree crops, he said, could potentially earn at least half of what growers get from their poppy crops. That’s not bad when the risks of poppy growing is factored in, he said. He said one demonstration almond orchard returned nearly $10,000 an acre last year, which really captured farmers’ attention.
Du Bruille said he’ll decide whether to return to WVC this fall or sign up for another stint in Afghanistan when he finishes his present contract with IFHope this summer.
Life in Afghanistan is potentially dangerous and very primitive compared to life here, he said, but the most difficult part is leaving his 17-year-old daughter, Kristen. He asked her what she thought of him being gone so much. She told him he should use his unique knowledge to help those who need help the most.
“I think we can help and I think we owe it to them,” Du Bruille said. “The bottom line is that I want to do good and I want to do it well.”
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