Guest Blog

I have just returned to Baghdad from my final leave in Alma, Michigan. During my 16-month temporary duty assignment, or TDY, I was given three two-week rest-and-recuperation breaks outside of Iraq.

The first one in May 2009 found me back home and realizing that I still have a long ways to go on my deployment.

My work here in Iraq is divided between four ministries. There are two of them that receive most of my attention, the Ministry of Agriculture and the Ministry of Water Resources (MoWR).

Here, in this article, I will write about the Ministry of Water Resources, the much smaller ministry in terms of personnel and perhaps one with a smaller mandate.

The work of research and experimentation is important for production agriculture. Advances made arise from discovering new methods, greater efficiencies and solving problems related to constraints. In this article, I write of our efforts at renovating a field station so farmers can increase crop yields and improve their families’ quality of life.

The service a food animal veterinarian provides has dramatically changed over the past 50 years. In the past, food animal veterinarians awaited farm calls concerning the health of individual animals, which helped individual farms.

As of this writing, I have completed my first full year in Iraq. My supervisors in Washington D.C. and here at the U.S. Embassy have added an additional four months on to my deployment. We have several developmental projects underway, and because they were built during my watch, I am to see them through.

The early 18th century saw a social upheaval in England. Historians estimate that half of the population depended in part upon charity to survive. A class war was very much in place. Early in that century, Parliament legislated capital punishment for servants who stole. At the same time, some rich were themselves into theft.