Rebuilding Afghanistan S Agriculture Sector

This report outlines sector strategies and needs, summarizes the subsectorreport findings, and highlights the programming aspects for rebuilding Afghanistan's agriculture sector.

In Afghanistan, the U.S. has begun to implement the new strategy articulated by Pres. Obama in Dec. 2009. The U.S. military and civilian surge is intended to create an 18-month window of opportunity to strengthen the Afghan government¿s ability to provide for its security and deliver essential services to its people. The U.S. gov¿t. needs to improve the way it designs and implements reconstruction programs. More attention must be paid in these 4 areas: matching the appropriate human and financial resources to achieve policy objectives; developing metrics to measure project and program results to ensure that reconstruction goals are being met; providing better oversight of contractors; and increasing efforts to deter corruption.

Contents: (1) Recent Legislative Action; (2) Intro.: Where the Congressional Debate Will Likely Focus; Evolution and Purpose of Legislation; ROZs as a Trade Preference Program; Economic, Trade and Investment Context for Legislation; (3) Major Elements of H.R. 1318 and S. 496: Permissible Locations for ROZs; Articles Eligible for Duty-Free Treatment under the ROZ Program and Rules of Origin; Tech. Assistance, Compliance Assessment, and Remediation Program; Responsibilities of Labor Officials; Presidential Responsibilities; Limitations on Providing Duty-Free Treatment; Termination of Benefits; (4) Potential Issues: Tariff Line Issues; Issues Related to Geographic Areas Permitted for ROZ Location; Labor-Related Issues; (5) Outlook. Illustrations.

The agriculture sector can play an important role in poverty reduction and sustained growth in Afghanistan, primarily through job creation, improved productivity, and inclusiveness. Using an 'agricultural jobs lens' and multidimensional approach, this report explores the sector's direct and indirect roles in explaining the dynamics of rural employment. The report critically examines three dimensions. First, it evaluates the current jobs structure in rural areas and finds that rural jobs are concentrated in cereal agriculture, especially in wheat, which reflects why the returns from jobs in agriculture are low in Afghanistan. Second, it analyzes the inclusive nature of agriculture jobs for vulnerable groups such as women, youth, those who are landless, and the bottom 40 percent of income earners. The analysis finds that although agriculture jobs are inclusive, many women and youth participate as voluntary family workers because they are unable to access markets and/or find paid jobs in the nonfarm sector. Third, the report evaluates the role of public and private sector interventions in supporting job creation in agriculture. It was argued that interventions can work and that there is significant scope to scale them up. Overall, the report exhibits many insights about the state of Afghanistan's rural labor market and provides guidance for formulating effective job-creation policies for the rural population. The key recommendations provide a pathway to achieve sustained and inclusive job growth through diversification toward high-value crops and livestock, linking farmers to markets through continued investment in connectivity and rural infrastructure, a balanced development strategy for an enabling environment for farm and nonfarm sectors, and strengthening the private sector presence in agriculture and its linkage with the public sector to agribusiness. In tandem, it is important to improve the design structure of jobs measurement for rural jobs, especially jobs in agriculture tailored to sectoral context.