The Rebuilding Of Afghanistan S Agriculture

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

The book raises critical questions relating to both humanitarian intervention and development agendas in crisis states. It supports a growing literature that interrogates past and present interventions, but does so by putting food security at the heart of both short- and long-term responses to crisis. In this it addresses two main issues. First, to review the current understanding of agriculture and food security issues in Afghanistan. Second, to bring together lessons on the nature and practice of interventions in support of food security and agriculture, particularly in the post-2001 period. The findings are a testimony to successful interventions, and explore wider implications of building food security under conditions of political instability. The book brings together papers by key practitioners and food security analysts with knowledge of the agricultural and political economy of Afghanistan. It makes an ongoing contribution to the theories of post-war rehabilitation in fragile states, providing an important reference for operational agencies and researchers. Published in association with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.

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.

The Other World combines a thematic and area studies approach to explore contemporary global issues in the developing world. Accessible and interdisciplinary, this text offers political, economic, social, and historical analysis plus case studies on Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa, North Africa and the Middle East, Central Asia and the Southern Near Abroad, and Asia. Highlighting similarities and differences among these regions and focusing on enduring problems, The Other World is a practical look at the issues affecting the majority of the world's population.

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.