Reaching Out to a Troubled Part of the World

By Justin Bannister

New Mexico State University is working to bring hope to people in Iraq by taking one of its original land-grant duties to the Middle East – Cooperative Extension work.

NMSU is part of a team of universities awarded $5.3 million by the U.S. Department of Agriculture for the Iraq Extension Revitalization Project. The project’s goal is to strengthen agricultural extension across Iraq.

“One out of four people in Iraq work in agriculture,” said Octavio Ramirez, NMSU Agricultural Economics and Agribusiness Department head. Agriculture is the second largest contributor to the Iraqi economy.

He said the project is vital because so many in Iraq rely on the agricultural sector for both food and employment.

“The infrastructure there has been destroyed,” said Richard Phillips, a project manager with NMSU’s Cooperative Extension Service. “Right now, they rely on aid from other countries.”

The consortium of universities is led by Texas A&M University and includes NMSU, Washington State University, Utah State University and the University of California at Davis. Prairie View A&M University, a historically black land-grant institution, and Diné College, a tribal college, also will be involved. For security reasons, the partnering Iraqi universities must be kept secret.

Ramirez said the team of U.S. universities will work with Iraqi university faculty as well as Ministry of Agriculture officials and Iraqi field agents to improve their understanding of agricultural extension programs through a series of training workshop modules. Each session will take place in the Middle East, but outside of Iraq. The total project will take 18 months.

The first workshops will focus on extension education and project management methods suitable to Iraq’s cultural and political situation.

From there, the Iraqis will be divided into small teams for further training in other, more specialized areas. Training modules for those areas will focus on several technical disciplines including community and economic development, farm and agribusiness management, agricultural products marketing, youth development programs and family health and nutrition.

NMSU will be involved in each of these training activities. Other U.S. universities in the group will focus on other areas, such as water use, livestock and crop production.

“The idea is to train them to a point to where they can go back and train others,” said Phillips.

He believes NMSU will have an advantage in the training because Iraq and New Mexico share many of the same geographic features, including mountains, desert and rivers used for irrigated agriculture.

The consortium plans to train Iraqis from different ethnic groups and regions together in the same classes. These groups include people who don’t always get along such as Kurds, Shias and Sunnis.

“One reason is efficiency,” said Ramirez. “If you want to train people across the country in a specific area such as agribusiness, it is best to get everyone together and deliver the training module just once.”

“This will also let them build relationships,” said Phillips.

Ramirez said a key feature of the project is that during each of the more specialized training modules, the Iraqis will team up by geographical regions to develop a variety of extension projects. The projects will focus on delivering information and supporting farmers and rural communities in different areas. Six months later, the teams will meet again to discuss their progress with each other and the U.S. facilitators.

The U.S. facilitators will be in constant contact, providing guidance and support to the Iraqi teams through e-mail, conference calls and other means of communication. More than 50 projects in a variety of areas will be implemented.

Afterwards, the teams will decide which projects to continue, expand or abandon depending on their success or whether they can be adjusted to improve performance.

The USDA has said restoring Iraq’s agricultural sector will contribute to overall stability in the country.

The consortium also plans to bring Iraqi agricultural administrators and leaders to American land-grant universities to show them how the extension system works in the U.S. and to develop relationships where both sides can learn from one another.