Re-establishing Afghanistan's animal agriculture
In a mountainous region in Afghanistan, along the Pakistan border, fighting and drought had decimated the animal population. What was once a thriving livestock region had turned into a combat zone, leaving farm families with limited options for survival.
Lieutenant Colonel Sam Barringer, DVM, commissioned preventive medicine officer in the U.S. Air Force Reserves, led a team to help re-establish animal agriculture in the area. The impact has been nothing short of tremendous. In some cases, it's meant that family members have an alternative to joining extremist movements to obtain resources. In others, it has meant basic survival.
“Our mission was to help reinvigorate animal agriculture in the area so that families could once again be self-sufficient,” said Barringer, manager of livestock veterinary operations with Pfizer Animal Health in Monument, Colorado. Barringer was deployed to Afghanistan as a public health adviser in November 2006. His work with the animal agriculture program started taking shape in early 2007.
The first step in the three-year program was to bring in livestock from areas around Afghanistan that had an excess of animals.
“The program is designed to be self-sustaining,” Barringer explained. “Each family receives five animals, one male. As the animals reproduce, each family has to return one animal to the program. Additional offspring are used to expand herds, or as food for the family.”
The second step of the program was to train local veterinarians on animal health assessment, prevention and treatment products and product administration. The local veterinarians were then responsible for administering animal care.
Barringer and his team presented a three-day training course for 45 Afghan veterinarians. He said the training was intense, breaks were rare and participants were very attentive.
“These veterinarians are very passionate about what they do, especially since in many cases, they also are the area's human medical providers,” Barringer said. “The veterinarians had a good, basic understanding of antibiotics, but we were moving them into the 21st century at warp speed – even something as simple as a multi-dose syringe was an amazing innovation to them. With their basic knowledge and willful determination, we were able to quickly get them up to speed on new advancements in animal medicine.
Veterinarians travel across their rural practice areas on motorcycles, horseback and even bicycles. They frequently travel great distances to treat an animal, then are unable to return for long periods of time, making repeat treatments extremely difficult. Part of Barringer's efforts included developing treatment protocols that would fit these logistical challenges.
“The gratitude of the veterinarians and the farmers was overwhelming,” Barringer said. “In many cases our work is the difference between life and death for a family because no animals equals no food and no money to buy it.” PD
— Submitted by Pfizer Animal Health
Courtesy photo from Pfizer Animal Health.
Sam Barringer
Veterinarian
What can U.S. dairymen learn from your experience overseas?
I think the most important thing dairymen can learn is how valuable our information is outside of our own little world. We need to be looking for opportunities to utilize our knowledge outside of that world.
When we take even some of our simple stuff and apply it in settings across the globe, it can have a big impact. My primary message is to stretch yourself beyond your own little world, and the return on that investment is pretty incredible.
How has your experience changed your perspective on how you treat livestock?
Just keep it simple. In other parts of the world, they don't have all the extra tools. And they get it done. Sometimes we go immediately to those tools rather than just keeping it simple. Start simple and work to the more complex.
We have the tendency in this country to start at the complex and work backwards. Most problems have a simple solution. If we start at the simple and work to the complex, we are more likely to come up with what really is going on in population medicine, in particular large dairies.
Did this experience change you personally?
In different parts of the world, they do things differently based on the resources that they have. It has helped me to not be critical of others who are trying to make things work when they don't have all of the tools we have available.
It hasn't really changed me. But when I go onto a dairy that is doing things in a way which has evolved for them and works for them, I am not immediately overcritical of them.
