Paul Sippola, a programme officer for the Washington, DC-based nonprofit development outfit CNFA, which ran the Department of Agriculture aid programme, said Rowe’s retro cellar design was used in about 50 potato storage sheds in Afghanistan.

It’s now being replicated with a few modifications to suit local needs in Pakistan’s Kashmir region, where seed potato farmers’ livelihoods were devastated by the 2005 earthquake. “It’s essentially the same one that Pat developed,” he said in a phone interview. “Pat’s work, which started in Afghanistan, has really grown.”

Rowe is a veteran of nearly 30 US government-sponsored trips to developing countries, including Egypt, China and Zimbabwe to help promote new agricultural techniques.

Farmers in Bamiyan, an ancient village on the Silk Road that spent 1,500 years in the shadow of two huge Buddha statues before they were dynamited by the Taliban in 2001, had no efficient way to store potatoes following their harvest, leading to drastic food-price increases and shortages.

“When the harvest is on, there’s a glut,” Rowe said. “If you had enough of those sheds built, it would make more food available to people at a reasonable price.”