Farming slows life down. It ties families to a particular locale for generations. The result is that agrarians are cautious folk. They never know whether their seeds will sprout or their blossoms set fruit. No wonder the ancient Greek comic playwright Aristophanes made farmers the advocates and custodians of peace.

Shame also keeps farming families honest, since their neighbors remain vigilant, even nosy. Bountiful or failed crops become public barometers of their own skill or hard work. Out of such habits and the daily rhythms of nature, an agrarian society gains stability and common sense. So it is no acci­dent that from the poet Virgil to the contemporary essayist Wendell Berry, a distance of 2,000 years, writers have waxed romantic about culture’s need to keep farmers on the land—in order to provide some sort of brake on society’s excesses.

We need that calm continuity desperately now in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is not that farmers as a class are unconcerned about war. Indeed, their attention to duty and rote make them ideal soldiers. (Look at Cincinnatus, who left his plow to lead the Romans against the Aequi, defeated them, and then went back to the farm.) And they have the most to lose when an enemy crosses the border.

But because they worry about the weather, water, neighbors, prices, and pests—both human and ani­mal—they are naturally preoccupied. Tillers of the soil have enough worries without flocking to a new -ism or -ology, or leaving the south 20 acres to stir up trouble. They may be tough folk, but they are not rabble-rousers or violent by nature.

The loss of small farmers in the post-industrial West to urbanization and mech­anization has had deleterious cultural consequences, but it was, nevertheless, a slow and predictable process. In America, the progression from telegraphs to tele­phones to cell phones took more than a century, whereas in Afghanistan or parts of Iraq, cell phones appeared even though telegraph wires never reached some villages.

And at least some of the rootlessness of the former Third World is just this dislocation of millions leav­ing farms within a single generation, combined with globalization bringing videos, satellite television, and CDs to an illiterate countryside. When there is little breathing space from the premodern to the postmodern, former peasants transform into AK-47-toting militiamen in a matter of only a few years.

So much of the violence and instability of the Middle East is not simply the intrusion of modern­ism, but rather its electronically charged arrival into a traditionally rural populace, one suffering from continual war and a past of Soviet-style collectiv­ization or Baathist commu­nal ownership.

Yet in Afghanistan, 70 per­cent of the population remains rural and works the soil. Half the population of Iraq still lives in rural areas or in small towns. Is it possible, then, to encourage small-scale free-holding agriculture as a means of preserving community life and curtailing the mob of unemployed urban youths?

The loss of small farmers in the West has had deleterious cultural consequences, but it was a slow and predictable process. In much of the developing world, change has happened too quickly, producing terrible dislocations.

Perhaps not—but the United States and others have at least tried to restore some elements of agrar­ian life in both Afghanistan and Iraq by introducing new technologies of fertilization, pest control, irri­gation, and practices to increase production without destroying community-based agriculture.

In the Dohuk area of Kurdistan, for example, a thriving grape-growing culture is returning, ener­gized by imported trellising systems and drip irrigation. The hope is that increased productivity can keep families on the farm to supply fresh fruit, juice, and raisins to local markets.

Vineyards and orchards are especially critical in stabilizing farming communities because they rep­resent assets and outlay that span decades rather than a single crop year. Once farmers put money and time into planting trees and vines, they invest for their children as well, and have a personal stake in a quiet landscape.

North of Baghdad at Baqubah, efforts have sought to restore Iraq’s once-thriving date industry that used to export 650,000 tons annually from some 30 million trees. Now, after years of neglect, Iraqi orchards produce less than 250,000 tons of dates a year. Any farmer flying over the Sunni Triangle today can lament the half-dead orchards that have been left subject to insect infestation. America’s con­tinuing restoration of irrigation ditches and system­atic pest control could boost Iraqi date production, and with it the return of thousands of families to the groves. And the farther away from Baghdad and Basra youths can make a liv­ing, the less likely they are to engage in terrorism.

We see a real dilemma now in Afghanistan. Thou­sands of farmers are return­ing to the land, working hard, finding prosperity, and preferring to stay in the outlands—precisely the con­ditions we wish for in stabilizing the countryside. But they are growing opium, rather than grains or fruit. If the United States has been slothful in erad­icating such a pernicious crop, it is in no small part because of its hesitation to destroy the rural lifestyle of tens of thousands of Afghans. If we could subsi­dize new replacement crops, the benefits would not just be in the elimination of the world’s largest raw source of heroin, but also in keeping farmers occu­pied and invested in their rural communities.

Winning “hearts and minds” in Afghanistan and Iraq should start in the countryside and work in, not from the city outward. The United States must ener­gize traditional small-scale, family-based farming by agricultural education, new equipment, export credits, and improved pesticides and fertilizers, and do so in a way that allows as many as possible to stay on the land—and thus out of trouble.