Sue Pleming

Reading Time: 2 minutes Afghans would rather be farmers than fighters, the U. S. agriculture secretary said Feb. 3, highlighting a U. S. focus on farming jobs to lure people from the battlefield and curtail the opium trade. Separate from the Afghan-led re-integration plan announced by President Hamid Karzai at a conference in London recently, Washington sees its agriculture […] Read more

Reading Time: 2 minutes Rebuilding agriculture can boost confidence in Afghanistan’s fragile government and pull farmers away from the drug money that fuels the Taliban insurgency, the U. S. agriculture chief said Jan. 10. The Obama administration sees agriculture as the biggest non-security priority in Afghanistan, said Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, as he arrived in Kabul for a three-day […] Read more