To help poor Afghani villagers make money on potatoes instead of opium poppies, Idaho farmer Pat Rowe used a little old technology: root cellars.

Rowe, 68, whose family raises tubers and wheat on 2,000 acres near American Falls, Idaho, went to the Central Asian country with a root cellar design common across his home state’s famous potato country in the 1930s and 1940s. As part of his work in Bamiyan, located about 100 miles west of Kabul, Rowe said it was important that his potato sheds not be too sophisticated. They had to be built with materials readily available.

Before leaving, he took notes from neighbours on Idaho’s Snake River plain who had a root cellar on their property. “You look at what people are using and see what they are doing,” Rowe said Monday, of his trip. “You don’t want to be a crazy foreigner with all these ideas. You’ve got to be practical with the application.”

Rowe went to Afghanistan as part of a $6.4 million US Department of Agriculture programme meant to fill gaps in Afghanistan’s food supply chain and develop agriculture to compete with the forbidden poppies that fuel the country’s heroin trade.

Rowe’s work in January 2006 won mention earlier this month by first lady Laura Bush. She brought up Rowe’s root cellars in a speech in France on June 12.

“Afghan potato farmers in Bamiyan have learned storage methods from an Idaho potato farmer that are making their crops more profitable,” said Bush, who had made an unannounced trip to Bamiyan four days earlier.

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