http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/metropolitan/2458912 COLLEGE STATION -- Texas A&M University's International Agriculture Office has helped plant about 800 acres of demonstration plots in Iraq to teach the country's farmers how to boost their crop yields. The university was chosen five months ago to lead a $107 million, three-year project to help rebuild the country's agriculture, which has been declining for years. After decades of neglect and poor planning, the amount of irrigated farmland is about one-third what it was in the 1970s, officials said. The tiny parcels of land planted under Texas A&M's guidance contain new varieties of winter wheat, barley, chickpeas, lentil and vetch, said Ed Price, the university's associate vice chancellor for international agriculture. The high-yield seeds are well known among American farmers, but are new to many who farm in Iraq. Price traveled to Iraq in December to help form a local advisory committee and map out a yearlong plan for crop demonstrations, the Bryan-College Station Eagle reported today. The group worked with Iraq's Ministry of Agriculture and staff at the University of Baghdad, hiring a university employee to oversee the demonstration plots. "I guess the bottom line in all of this is our Iraqi colleagues are very capable and quite determined to be in charge of this," Price said. The group soon plans to start planting summer crops such as rice, corn and cotton, Price said. The new demonstration plots should be started by the end of March. Price said he plans to send more faculty members to Iraq by the end of the year. He said he had hoped to have already sent faculty members by now, but they ran into some snags with the U.S. Agency for International Development, which is funding the project. "The commitment is still there -- it's just been that mobilizing funds has been more problematic for them," Price said. "But it's fine because everything is in the field."
i was disappointed to find out that the male "cheerleaders" attacked the women of iraq with their sabers when they stepped on the grass....
