Local agent teaches extension in Middle East

Washington State University Extension Specialist Stephen Van Vleet will be traveling to Afghanistan next week to teach Afghani extension educators.

Stephen Van Vleet teaching in Iraq with the Iraqi Director of Extension, bottom right.

Van Vleet will be one of three American extension personnel going to Kabul to teach extension organization, program development and planning and other basic extension methods.

“With all the problems Afghanistan has had, there’s been a lot of funds poured into Afghanistan,” Van Vleet said.

So much money has come in that the Ministry of Agriculture, Irrigation and Livestock Production (MAIL) has said it’s too much. Although the Ministry set up the extension program a few years ago, getting the information out and programs going has been harder.

“It’s very, very, very basic,” Van Vleet said of the extension program. “There’s desperate need for infrastructure.” One example he gave was, while there are 50 educators, they only have three motorcycles for transportation.

This venture is a cooperative project through UC-Davis, Texas A&M and WSU. Van Vleet will be traveling with an extension tree fruit specialist from Douglas County who has been to the country a couple times before and an agronomist from Texas A&M.

While each has their own programs they handle back home, the three will focus only on teaching Afghani educators how to develop and conduct programs; to perform extension and research. Their efforts will help the MAIL and extension educators get focused and get information and resources to their local producers. Then they can get food going to the country and help stabilize the region.

“This is training on extension,” Van Vleet said.

“Actually, I volunteered. I’ve been over to Iraq; did similar training in Iraq.” In June 2011 he traveled to Iraq with the agronomist from Texas A&M

“It’s good to keep consistency (with agents in these countries),” he noted.

Previous grants and extension work has already gone into establishing a teaching farm in Jalalabad for applied research. The cooperative will send extension specialists to the facility in March to train Afghani educators applied research methods.

Afghanistan produces a lot of grain as well as legumes and crops with simple irrigation.

“It’s not as advanced as our irrigation, but that’s why we’re going over there,” Van Vleet said. He added that the Afghani farmers are very limited on equipment.

A trip to the Middle East presents challenges not faced on homeland trips.

“There’s definitely safety concerns,” Van Vleet said. The extension specialists will travel with an armed escort in an armored SUV. Travel will be limited to Kabul due to both time and safety.

“But it’s not as scary as you’d think it would be,” he said, noting that while in Iraq he felt safer than going into bad areas of bigger US cities like Seattle.

He will leave for Kabul Jan. 10 and return Jan. 18. The extension agents will conduct four days of training.

“I am excited,” he confessed. He has had several conference calls with the other agents and submitted materials such as worksheets that will be translated into the local dialect.

“It’ll be interesting, that’s for sure.”

Stephen Van Vleet, back, with Iraqi extension educators June 2011.