A Job Program That Works - And Cheaply !!!

Corps Deploys Cows for Iraq's Economy
Los Angles Times
January 12, 2009

AL-ANBAR PROVINCE, Iraq -- As U.S. forces work to revive Iraq's tattered farming economy, they seem to have found an effective new weapon.

Cows.

At the suggestion of an Iraqi women's group, the Marine Corps recently bought 50 cows for 50 Iraqi widows in the farm belt around Fallujah, once the insurgent capital of war-torn al-Anbar province.

The cow purchase is seen as a small step toward re-establishing Iraq's once-thriving dairy industry, as well as a way to help women and children hurt by the frequent failure of the Iraqi government to provide the pensions that Iraqi law promises to widows.

The early sign is that the program is working. Widows, many with no other income, have a marketable item to sell, as well as milk for their children. Although Iraqis, particularly women, are often reluctant to participate in an American effort, the cows were immediately popular.

"It was an easy sell," said Maj. Meredith Brown, assigned to the Marines' outreach program for Iraqi women.

The idea, proposed by members of the Women's Cultural Center in Fallujah, at first met with resistance from U.S. military officers and civilian officials involved in aid programs for al-Anbar. Nothing in their training provided guidance in haggling for livestock.

Those objections evaporated when Maj. Gen. John Kelly, the top Marine in Iraq, signaled his support, Brown said. The Iraqis now refer to their animals as Kelly's Cows.

Although Kelly's support might have been based on gut instinct, the need to beef up Iraq's dairy industry was argued in a Nov. 25 report by Land O'Lakes Inc.

The Minnesota cheese-and-butter company was hired by the Marine Corps to examine the Iraqi dairy industry. Its 38-page report, based on field research in the fall by two Land O'Lakes dairy specialists, concluded that there was enormous growth potential for the industry in a milk-drinking, cheese-eating nation that can locally produce enough milk to satisfy only 5 percent of the demand.

The study also pointed out that, even in Iraqi farm families with able-bodied adult males, much of the work is left to women: "Women milk the cows, bring feed and fodder to the animals and are supported by their children."

Americans know Land O'Lakes best from its products in the dairy case, but the company has been involved in 150 development projects in 70 countries in recent decades. Among them was a dairy project in Afghanistan after the Taliban was toppled in the U.S.-led invasion in 2001.

Its report cited a litany of woes besetting the Iraqi dairy industry: facilities damaged by war, looting or neglect; a lack of good feed; a dearth of veterinarians and the initiative-numbing effect of three decades of centralized planning under Saddam Hussein .

The cows-for-widows program is the latest of several initiatives by the United States to help Iraq's dairy and beef industries . Brown put the program cost so far at $58,000.

To qualify for a free cow, each widow had to sign an agreement not to slaughter or sell the animal and instead to use the milk as a marketable item or for the family .


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