The United States' Program for Agriculture in Post-Invasion Iraq

By Sam Beer

In the wake of the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the United States embarked on the massive project of rebuilding and transforming the agricultural sector in that country. This program was as controversial as the invasion itself, being variously portrayed as the hands-on altruism of Farm Belt army reservists or the neocolonial subjugation of Iraqi farmers to American corporations. Agricultural “development” in Iraq (and simultaneously, in Afghanistan) was conducted differently than previous such projects—largely by contractors rather than USAID employees, and in close coordination with the occupying military forces. While a popular opinion has emerged against the invasion itself, there has been little retrospective discussion about the goals or methods of agricultural aid in Iraq. With close examination of the changes enacted, this book sets out to foster that discussion.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Oct 24, 2016
• ISBN: 9781365483660

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The United States' Program for Agriculture in Post-Invasion Iraq

THE UNITED STATES’ PROGRAM FOR AGRICULTURE IN POST-INVASION IRAQ

Sam Beer

© 2016[1]

ISBN: 978-1-365-48326-4

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[1] No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or intro­duced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or other­wise), without the prior written permission of the copyright owner.

Contents

Contents

Map

Acronyms & Abbreviations

INTRODUCTION

1: STRATEGY

2: BEFORE THE WAR

AGRICULTURAL LAND

SUPPORTS AND SUBSIDIES

SANCTIONS

OIL FOR FOOD PROGRAM

RESEARCH AND EXTENSION

SEEDS

3: PLANNING

COMMITMENT TO MARKETS

USAID’S OTHER PROGRAMS

4: EXECUTION

5: WINTER CEREAL CROPS

VARIETIES AND ENVIRONMENTS

SEED SUPPLIES

CEREALS AND LIVESTOCK

6: SUMMER CEREAL CROPS

RICE

RICE-WHEAT CROPPING

MAIZE

SORGHUM

MESOPOTAMIA SEED COMPANY

7: ORDER 81

8: POULTRY

9: SHEEP AND GOATS

WOOL

MEAT

RANGELAND DEGRADATION

ANIMAL HEALTH

10: FORAGE LEGUMES

11: CATTLE

12: VEGETABLES

POTATOES

TOMATOES

13: TREE FRUITS

APPLES

OLIVES

TREE VARIETIES

14: GRAPES

15: DATE PALM

16: IRRIGATION

17: THE MARSHES

Map of Iraq’s Marshes

18: ASSOCIATIONS

19: TARGETING POVERTY

20: HIGHER EDUCATION IN AGRICULTURE

21: THE USDA AND THE MILITARY

22: ACCOUNTABILITY

23: CONTINUATION

CONCLUSIONS

Acknowledgments

References

Map

University of Texas Libraries Perry Castañeda Library Map Collection. U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, 2003. http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/middle_

east_and_asia/iraq_land_use_2003.jpg

Acronyms & Abbreviations

INTRODUCTION

[T]he key to successful agricultural development lies in supporting the host nation as it pursues its own development strategies for improving the indigenous agriculture sector.

Bernard Carreau, ed., Lessons from USDA in Iraq and Afghanistan, Prism Vol. 1, No. 3 (September 2011): 141

The impetus for this project was straightforward: an acquaintance referred me to an article published in the British magazine, The Ecologist, in February 2005.[2]

In Order 81, the author, Jeremy Smith, denounced the agricultural policies that the United States was imposing on occupied Iraq. The title referred to a dictate by Ambassador L. Paul Bremer III, head of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA). In Order 81, Bremer had revised the section of Iraq’s legal code that concerned Patents, Industrial Design, Undisclosed Information, Integrated Circuits and Plant Variety Law. Bremer, in close consultation with and acting in coordination with the Governing Council, had promulgated Order 81 on April 26, 2004. Through 100 such orders, Bremer had revised much of the legal code by the time that the CPA turned over the governance of Iraq to a new Governing Council on July 1 of that year.

Those new legal structures were accompanied by economic and financial reforms. These allowed up to 100 percent foreign ownership in all sectors except natural resources, and allowed full and immediate remittance of profits by foreign investors. They permitted foreign banks to purchase local banks (six could purchase interests up to 100 percent, and an unlimited number could purchase interests up to 50 percent). Maximum marginal income tax rates were set at 15 percent, both for individuals and for corporations. Tariffs were lowered to a flat five percent rate, to be levied on all imports except humanitarian goods. According to Finance Minister Kamel Al-Gailani:

The reforms will significantly advance efforts to build a free and open market economy in Iraq, promote Iraq’s future economic growth, accelerate Iraq’s re-entry into the international economy and reintegration with other countries, and the development of domestic Iraqi institutions that are based on international standards and international best practices.[3]

Those goals were precisely what troubled Smith. One section of Order 81 granted plant breeding companies control over the sale of seeds of the varieties that they had developed. The reconstruction of Iraq’s agricultural sector would introduce farmers to imported commercial varieties, along with the fertilizers and pesticides necessary to maximize their yields. Commodity value, not the dietary preferences of Iraqi consumers, would chiefly determine which varieties would be grown. Smith wrote:

Iraqi farmers are to be taught to grow crops for export. Then they can spend the money they earn (after they have paid for next year’s seeds and chemicals) buying food to feed their families. Under the guise of aid, the US has incorporated them into the global economy.[4]

(The United States was not the only target of such criticism. The advocacy organization, AID/WATCH, directed similar charges toward the Australian government. The author of an AID/WATCH report stated, "Australian [sic] participated in, had high-level officials not only transforming agriculture and trying to get further wheat contracts, but also had high-level officials in the Coalition Provisional Authority."[5])

Opening Iraq’s economy to foreign investment and trade was arguably a major objective of the U.S.-led invasion. By February 2003—a month before the military action began—reporter Greg Palast had obtained a 101-page government document entitled Moving the Iraqi Economy from Recovery to Growth. This plan, according to Palast, included the revision of Iraq’s policies, laws, and regulations. It had been written in consultation with lobbyists and leaders of corporations, from the Recording Industry Association of America to major oil companies.[6] However, these ambitious plans competed with more immediate objectives—avoiding a humanitarian crisis and maintaining basic services as soon as the invaders had overthrown the Saddam Hussein’s government. Toward the latter objectives, an Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance (ORHA) was created under the supervision of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy.[7] President Bush’s first appointee to head the ORHA, retired Lieutenant General Jay M. Garner, announced his intention to hold elections as soon as possible, preferably within 90 days of overthrowing Saddam Hussein’s government. The rapid transfer of power envisioned by Garner would allow little time to revise Iraq’s entire legal system, and to restructure the country’s economy.

On May 6, 2003, almost simultaneously with Garner’s arrival in Baghdad, President George W. Bush announced that he had appointed L. Paul Bremer III as Presidential Envoy and chief civil administrator in Iraq. By a process that was never clearly articulated, the ORHA was replaced by or subsumed in the Coalition Provisional Authority. By June 18, Lieutenant General Garner no longer was the head of ORHA. A Department of Defense (DOD) news transcript dated June 18 identified him as the former director of ORHA, and indicated he had returned to the United States a couple of weeks earlier.[8] Ambassador Bremer soon made clear that he planned to transfer sovereignty back to the Iraqis more slowly than Garner had intended to do. (According to the timetable envisioned in Moving the Iraqi Economy from Recovery to Growth, the occupiers would spend a year just building a consensus for privatization of Iraq’s industry; assets would be transferred over the following three years.[9]) In part, the slower schedule reflected the dire condition of Iraq’s economy and infrastructure. But beyond physical reconstruction, Bremer would use those months to rewrite the country’s laws.

In the United States (and other exporting countries like Australia), the agricultural sector was clamoring to open trade with Iraq. Testifying before the House Agriculture Committee, a spokesman for wheat growers spoke about what needs to be done to rebuild the Iraq wheat market.[10] A representative of the rice growers stated, The US rice industry wants to play a major role once again in supplying rice to Iraq.[11] Not surprisingly, legislators expressed eagerness to help such well-organized constituents. Chairman Bob Goodlette responded, We are very interested in seeing that these markets be reopened to each of your commodities.[12] The position of the Executive Branch was more complicated, because it was supporting export-oriented American farmers while simultaneously taking on the responsibility of rebuilding a conquered country’s domestic agriculture. Mr. Lee Schatz, Special Counsel for Iraq Reconstruction in USDA’s Foreign Agricultural Service, assured the Committee:

If we got that [wheat] production up double in the country [of Iraq], there is still the demand there if we have got an economy going. The Australian advisors and the American advisors have agreed all along we are not afraid of a more productive agriculture sector as long as there is a better economy in the country, because this is a society that is still going to eat more food [emphasis added].[13]

The Administration certainly had no cause to fear that Iraqi farmers would soon become competitive with American farmers in any market outside Iraq. (Even before the Gulf War, according to the World Bank, those Iraqi products that were globally competitive comprised dried fruit, sulfur, and petroleum.[14]) Moreover, a revival of the livestock industry in Iraq would create markets for American feed grain and soybean exporters. And revival of Iraqi production of grains, fruits, and vegetables would create markets for American exports of fertilizers, pesticides, seeds, and production and processing machinery. Iraq’s agricultural sector would require credit, which might be provided by subsidiaries that American banks envisioned opening in Iraq. When President Bush appointed Daniel Amstutz, the former Vice President of Cargill Corporation, a giant grain conglomerate, to direct agricultural reconstruction in Iraq, Secretary of Agriculture Ann Veneman stated, He will help us achieve our national objective of creating a democratic and prosperous Iraq while at the same time best utilize the resources of our farmers and food industry in the effort, both in the interim and for the longer term.[15]

The pursuit of self-interest by U.S.-based businesses, supported by the U.S. politicians, wouldn’t necessarily cause more harm than good to Iraqi farmers or consumers. Nor would those commercial interests necessarily dominate the development projects that were actually undertaken. How much was the export-focused vision of elected officials shared by those within the federal bureaucracy? Many of the career employees in agencies like the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) had long first-hand experience in developing countries, and consequently held their own opinions about what activities actually improved the livelihoods of farmers and poor people. The same was true of the contractors that USAID would hire to run agricultural development projects in Iraq. Did the free trade and private-enterprise ideology of the Bush Administration actually penetrate to the projects on the ground in Iraq? Might the actors—federal employees or contractors—support a broader scope for agricultural interventions by an Iraqi government than those envisioned by the Bush Administration?

Even if reconstruction projects were biased toward private enterprise and global agricultural markets, might the execution of those projects fall short? Prior to the invasion, many Americans might struggle to locate Iraq on a globe; nevertheless, they could identify Saddam Hussein as a dictator who controlled all aspects of Iraq’s economy. Even after Hussein’s regime had been decapitated, Iraqi functionaries might keep tight hold of agricultural policies. As the collapse of governments of the Soviet bloc had shown, many common citizens preferred the relative certainty of government-controlled production and distribution to the vagaries of uncontrolled markets. Might Iraqi bureaucrats, buttressed by popular opinion, resist the dismantling of state controls? Might they stall any remodeling efforts by Iraq’s occupiers, confident that the latter would eventually go home? Moreover, the economic restructuring dictated by the CPA held dubious standing under international law. Might a subsequent sovereign government in Iraq repudiate Bremer’s orders, perhaps rendering unenforceable any contracts between Iraqis and American businesses? Thus, even were the occupation to create opportunities for foreign investment, might investors be reluctant to put their capital at risk? Given all these uncertainties between the dictates of American politicians and their high-level appointees, and the actual performance of reconstruction by lower-level bureaucrats, contractors, and the Iraqis themselves, the fears of critics like Jeremy Smith might never materialize.

The effectiveness of any reconstruction program was challenged by the events that quickly followed the U.S.-led invasion. The uncontrolled looting obliterated many of the facilities upon which any reconstruction must be built. The American program would spend time and resources merely to reconstruct that starting point. High officials in the Bush Administration famously underestimated Iraqi resistance to the occupation, and armed resistance impeded much of the planned reconstruction. Program staff could travel only to areas that the coalition forces deemed permissive, or relatively safe. Iraqis who collaborated with the reconstruction projects were targets of the resistance. (Even in the reports recording agricultural reconstruction projects, faces in photographs had been obscured in order to protect those individuals from retribution.)

To the degree that the U.S. government succeeded in implementing its plan for Iraq’s agricultural sector, were Iraqi farmers or urban consumers better off? This last question is probably the most contentious. A decades-old debate surrounds the effects of technological innovation, consolidation, and globalization of agriculture. The orthodox view follows a deductive argument first espoused by Thomas Malthus in 1798: Currently, some people lack adequate food. The world’s population is increasing, even while the area suitable for agriculture is fixed. Over time, therefore, even more people will lack adequate food unless yields per area rise at least as fast as population. The adoption of new agricultural technologies can increase yields; therefore, proponents of this scarcity explanation for world hunger promote innovation over traditional practices. They tend to favor markets over governmental interventions as the best means of fostering innovation and optimizing agricultural production. The greatest yield can be achieved by growing a crop in regions where it is best adapted; therefore, regional specialization and trade in foodstuffs should, according to this theory, provide the most food at the least cost to consumers.

The opposing argument is inductive: Even while some people lack food, current worldwide food production actually exceeds the amount needed to feed everybody.[16] Therefore, people go hungry primarily because they cannot afford to obtain food. If some people’s inability to buy or grow enough food were the root cause of hunger, then the solution would be to distribute income or assets to the hungry. Since any non-violent redistribution would depend on governmental authority, this argument implicitly calls for some state intervention. This alternative poverty explanation for hunger is not inherently opposed to technological innovation in agriculture. However, its proponents warn that free markets, free trade, food aid, or even green revolution technologies, for example, can all be barriers to obtaining food when inequalities are deeply ingrained.[17] This was a scenario that Jeremy Smith envisioned in Iraq—a redeveloped agriculture in which farmers had to compete in international markets at prices that didn’t cover the costs of imported inputs. Profits wouldn’t be captured by farmers, but would instead accrue to the corporations that manufacture or import agricultural inputs. Ultimately, fewer Iraqis might have secure access to food.

This study opens with an examination of USAID’s ideology of agricultural development, and its relation to these contrasting scarcity and poverty arguments regarding the roles of governments and technological innovation in providing people with food. Then I’ve briefly recounted the history of Iraqi agriculture in the years before the 2003 invasion. I’ve described the U.S. government’s planning for the reconstruction of Iraq’s agricultural sector, and the initial implementation of those plans. Most of what follows covers the reconstruction projects in several different agricultural sub-sectors. This program to reconstruct Iraq’s agriculture will have consequences over decades. Therefore, this brief study provides no final judgments. However, I have tried to highlight whether various reconstruction activities might circumscribe those functions that a future Iraqi government might play, whether they might promote the entry of foreign corporations into Iraq’s agricultural sector, and whether they might enhance or erode the security of poor rural Iraqis. I have also noted how looting, violence, or other conditions in Iraq have impeded the U.S. government’s program. Early alarms about this program—such as Smith’s—focused on proprietary varieties of seeds. Therefore, I’ve provided a brief history of the methods by which plant breeders have developed new varieties, and subsequently controlled farmers’ access to their creations. I’ve tried to determine what species and varieties of crops and livestock were promoted by the reconstruction program, and whether restrictions existed on their propagation.

Provoked by Jeremy Smith’s article, I looked for others on the same topic. I found Smith’s claims reverberating on the Internet echo chamber. I read Oxfam’s denunciation of the Amstutz appointment: This guy is uniquely well-placed to advance the commercial interests of American grain companies and bust open the Iraqi market—but singularly ill-equipped to lead a reconstruction effort in a developing country.[18] I also encountered stories of U. S. troops supplying aid to Iraqi farmers (e.g., Troopers Plant Seeds of Reconstruction in Iraq).[19] Yet few details emerged about USAID’s major contract for agricultural reconstruction and development. As much news as came out of Iraq, surprisingly little could I find about the situation of its agriculture.

Consequently, in February 2006 I filed with USAID a request for documents under the federal Freedom of Information Act. In October 2007, the agency provided me with about 800 pages of documents relating to the contract. Those documents, along with USAID’s on-line archives, constituted the bulk of the material that I have reviewed. My study inevitably spread to other related development projects—most funded by the U.S. government or various international agencies. Events, already having a head start, soon outpaced my research. As development programs were being renewed or else replaced by similar ones, I drew a rough endpoint at 2007. I’ve concluded with agricultural statistics extending beyond that date, from which to judge the effectiveness of these programs. Iraq’s descent back into sectarian violence, and the further fragmentation of the country, would complicate any analysis since 2013. As the final chapters will show, the United States has been as unsuccessful rebuilding Iraq’s agriculture as it was rebuilding the country’s politics.

With the very survival of a unified Iraq in question, an analysis of the post-invasion effort to resurrect one segment of that nation’s economy might seem irrelevant. This study might be dismissed as the equivalent of mapping the deck chairs on the iceberg-stricken Titanic. However, the reconstruction program in Iraq occupied an important moment in the history of such programs. During the Cold War, development aid had been promoted as a way to gain allies in the West’s competition with the Soviet bloc. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, that rationale for foreign aid had largely disappeared. Consequently, such aid had dwindled, at least in relation to the United States federal budget or the nation’s economy. By 2009 USAID, the agency most directly involved in running development programs, had shrunk from a peak of more than 18,000 employees to one-eighth that number. Increasingly, its programs were being performed not by the agency’s own staff, but by contracted employees from a small group of for-profit companies and non-profit organizations. Following the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, the United States government designed and funded reconstruction programs there of unprecedented scale. (Between 2000 and 2004, Iraq and Afghanistan together absorbed US$10 billion of the US$27 billion in new aid provided world-wide by donor states.[20]) Yet as these massive programs in Iraq were winding down, USAID was turning to a new model: soliciting and funding projects that were proposed and operated by local organizations within developing countries. Moreover, some of these projects are being funded not directly by the United States government, but rather by private lenders, whose loans receive government guarantees. To some critics, this represents the privatization of development aid, a trend already evident in the growing clout of private foundations—particularly the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. (In 2009, Dr. Rajiv Shah was appointed to administer USAID after working for the Gates Foundation.[21]) The potentials and pitfalls of these new approaches can better be understood by studying past attempts at reconstruction and development.

The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq had generated a second model of development aid, the Provincial Reconstruction Team or PRT. Integrated with and heavily dependent on the occupying military forces, these teams initiated projects at the request of local populations and governments. According to participants and observers, the work of the PRTs lacked both a national strategy and significant integration with USAID’s large-scale reconstruction programs. The long-term impact of PRTs in Iraq should affect how similar models of reconstruction are employed in other conflicts.

I’ve never traveled to Iraq. Nor—as will be abundantly clear—have I ever worked as a journalist. This foray into investigative citizen journalism soon decelerated into the deliberative academic writing with which I’m more familiar. My work became the condensation of many pages of reports into a much smaller number. Its most important source was USAID, the very agency that it seeks to critique. Despite these limitations, while reading about apples and potatoes, sheep and wheat, seed cleaners and chicken coops, I experienced vivid images of Iraqi farmers. While their faces were carefully obscured in USAID’s final report, a sense of their labors and lives came through. I hope that I convey a little of that to the reader.

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[2] Jeremy Smith, Order 81, The Ecologist, 35 (February 2005): 40-44.

[3] Kamel Al-Gailani, Press statement, September 21, 2003, accessed February 11, 2013, http://ontario.worldlibrary.net/Members/Export_and_Trade_Collection/

iraq_fiimin_investment.pdf

[4] Smith, Order 81, 42.

[5] Aust misused Iraq aid: report, Australian Broadcasting System, transcript of broadcast 6:34 pm AEST, August 3, 2007.

[6] Greg Palast, Adventure Capitalism, February 26, 2004, accessed February 10, 2013, http://www.tompaine.com/articles/adventure_capitalism.php

[7] L. Elaine Halchin, The Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA): Origin, Characteristics, and Institutional Authorities (Washington DC: Congressional Research Service, Library of Congress, September 21, 2006), 2, accessed February 10, 2013, http://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metacrs10420/

[8] Halchin, The Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA): Origin, Characteristics, and Institutional Authorities, 3.

[9] Neil King Jr., Bush Officials Draft Broad Plan for Free-Market Economy in Iraq, Wall Street Journal, eastern edition, May 1, 2003, A1.

[10] Hearing of the House Department of Agriculture, June 16, 2004, Washington DC, 28.

[11] Hearing of the House Department of Agriculture, 26.

[12] Hearing of the House Department of Agriculture, 30.

[13] Hearing of the House Department of Agriculture, 18.

[14] World Bank, Rebuilding Iraq: Economic Reform and Transition, (Washington DC: February 2006), 73, accessed February 11, 2013, http://siteresources.worldbank.

org/IRFFI/Resources/IraqCEM-finalComplete.pdf

[15] United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), Amstutz Tapped to Lead Iraqi Agriculture Reconstruction, USDA News, 62 (April-June 2003): 3.

[16] According to a United Nations report released in September 2014, over 800 million people lacked adequate food, in a world that produced more than twice the amount needed to feed its population. Somina Sengupta, 800 Million People Still Malnourished, U.N. Says, New York Times, September 16, 2014.

[17] Stephen J. Scanlan, J. Craig Jenkins, and Lindsey Peterson, The Scarcity Fallacy, 2, accessed February 10, 2013, http://contexts.org/articles/winter-2010/the-scarcity-fallacy/

[18] Heather Stewart, Fury at agriculture post for US businessman, The Guardian, April 28, 2003, Foreign pages, 11.

[19] Erik LeDrew, Troopers Plant Seeds of Reconstruction in Iraq, Freerepublic.com website, October 16, 2004, accessed March 14, 2013, http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1247199/posts

[20] Foreign Aid Tied to Terror fight: Report, Reality of Aid website, June 19, 2006, accessed March 18, 2014, http://www.realityofaid.org/foreign-aid-tied-to-terrorfight-report/

[21] Ron Nixon, In Switch, Development Agency Welcomes Business and Technology to Poverty Fight, New York Times, April 8, 2014, A8.

1: STRATEGY

In July 2004, USAID laid out a general strategy concerning agricultural development in the publication, USAID Agricultural Strategy: Linking Producers to Markets. Tellingly, the report