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Hi Neal / Victoria - Winrock is one of about six NGO's that manage Farmer to Farmer exchange programs for USAID. They send farmers and agricultural specialists to work directly with farmers in rural parts of host countries, for 2-5 weeks at a stretch. Sustainable farming, organic, and biodynamic farming are now regular topics along with beekeeping, dairy, pest mgtm, vegetables, fruit, etc... in the USAID assignments. I've completed organics and biodynamics trainings through FTF and I've helped get other experienced people hooked up to certain assignments. Naturally FTF learning and technology transfer is a two-way street. No matter where you go in the world, if you let look around there are ancient and modern models of sustainable agriculture. It is my sense that socio-economic-political disruption of Iraq is far more detrimental to re-grouping of agriculture in Iraq than the ability of local farmers to farm sustainably. Agriculturists can bring energy and technology to places like Iraq/Afghanistan, sometimes if only to facilitate an assessment of local resources and technology, and to re-assure people that local methods of sustainable production are valid.... with some new tools and techniques brought from outside added to the mix. The poverty that is rampant in many parts of the world is a real stranglehold, even to move just inches. Sometimes just bringing "seeds" is all that is needed. I have watched famers in one part of India watering whole fields of vegetable crops by dipping a cup into a bucket that is carried from a well. In another part of India gravity-fed trickle irrigation lines are used, hooked up to tanks perched a few feet above ground. Just transferring this technolgy around would solve many hardships. Even still, donations of supplies might be necessary as poverty is extreme in rural parts of the two-thirds world. I should also mention that permaculture activists are working in many parts of the world and employing the best of local and outside thinking and methods to solve local problems. Where they are few and far between in number, the permacultural approach has much to offer. Steve Diver NCAT / ATTRA Neal Van Milligen wrote:
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