Posted on 01/26/2008 10:53:11 AM PST by SandRat
BAGHDAD — With nearly five years of war taking a toll on Iraq’s domestic poultry industry, overall chicken and egg consumption is down in the country, while 40 percent of the commercial eggs consumed in Baghdad are imported.
But with recent security improvements, achieved through the cooperation of local residents and a counter-insurgency strategy implemented by Coalition Forces, an opportunity has been gained to resume production.
In Mahmudiyah, an agricultural community south of the Iraqi capital, and a traditional hub of Baghdad province’s poultry industry, some of the most violence of the war effectively halted production of a variety of poultry, broilers and eggs.
As part of a wider economic revitalization and job-creation program taking place across provinces south and east of Baghdad, civil affairs specialists with the U.S. military’s Multi-National Division – Center are now taking steps to make Iraq’s poultry growers competitive again within the domestic market.
The military is working hand-in-hand with agricultural experts from a U.S. State Department-led embedded provincial reconstruction team (ePRT) to identify poultry farmers and band them together into a form of regional cooperative. They named the cooperative the Mahmudiyah Poultry Association.
The military branded its own efforts more creatively: “Operation Chicken Run.”
Like other military initiatives, there is a security angle to it. Employment and economic prosperity, Coalition commanders argue, breeds stability. Holding on to the pockets of security that were created with combat offensives throughout summer and fall 2007 requires the continued support of local populations, so Coalition troops are now focused on building economic and government capacity in the communities they secured. In poultry they see the chance for a quick victory based on the industry’s past in Iraq.
A large percentage of chicken consumed in Iraq now comes from imports of frozen meat. Making Iraqi-grown chicken and eggs competitive in domestic markets will require economies of scale. Thus the need for pooled resources and a regional poultry association to act as a coordinating body, said Maj. Jessica McCoy, an Army veterinarian based in nearby Yusufiyah and a member of a Provincial Reconstruction Team.
“Right now about 40 percent of the commercial eggs consumed in Baghdad are imported,” McCoy said. “This chicken farmers’ association will assist local egg-laying operations to eat into that share by providing a source of inexpensive high-quality feed, and thereby increase Iraq’s domestic fresh egg consumption.”
McCoy, a native of Wellesley, Mass., is joined in the effort by Capt. Paul Hester, an ePRT agri-business specialist who worked closely with farmers’ associations and cooperatives in the United States. Hester noted that Iraqi farmers are familiar with the principles behind the co-op, and had similar arrangements in place in the past, but require coaching to move beyond their experience under the former state-controlled system and into a free market.
“The Iraqi farmer has the basic knowledge of the association process from his past. Under Saddam (Hussein), the industries were often integrated, but the control was with the government,” Hester said.
“With the formation of the Mahmudiyah Poultry Association we are putting the knowledge of the farmers, both in farming practices and working in an integrated system, to work for them, not for the government,” he explained.
Hester and McCoy met and interviewed more than 100 broiler growers to get a baseline feel for capacity and requirements before advancing with their plan to link the farmers.
“We are assisting them to increase their abilities and profits by working together, buying from each other, and developing items such as breeding stock, feeds and markets,” Hester said.
Among the most important steps is distributing chicks to farmers to enable them to resume self-sufficient operations. But before farmers will be ready to receive chicks, the farms themselves must undergo renovations and the infrastructure needed to support the industry must be repaired and improved.
The ePRT is seeking assistance from the U.S. Agency for International Development’s Community Stabilization Program to help individual farmers repair their facilities. They are also seeking to repair the association’s processing plant. Additional funds will come from military and State Department grants, as well as from the government of Iraq.
Another benefit, McCoy noted, is that economic cooperation serves to bridge the sectarian divide that has emerged between Sunni and Shia communities in Iraq.
“Already we have 14 tribes represented, and they have all agreed to work together to make this happen,” McCoy said.
“This project will be a model for Iraqi farmers and business owners to show them that they can work together, regardless of their tribal or religious ties, and provide a higher standard of living for their families,” Hester added.
McCoy provided another motivation for her and Hester’s work with the farmers.
“As people realize the close association between security and increased standard of living, they will reject al-Qaeda,” she said. “When that happens, the security becomes self-sustaining and we can all come home.”
I hope that when rebuilding their chicken and egg industry, they take into account the threat from Avian Flu. That is, with some clever design and organization, outbreaks could be much more easily contained at much lower cost to everyone.
One of our 4th CEB Charlie Company platoons was in that area in ‘04/’05, and they lived in “the chicken factory”, an old processing plant. The “triangle of death” - Mahmudiyah, Yusufiyah, Latifiyah, Iskandariyah. Just talked at length with a Mom who lost her son there in ‘04. Glad to see such improvement.
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