The twists and turns of life drew a path that led Dr. Lyle Jackson to share his experiences in Afghanistan and his job in the Department of Homeland Security (HDS) last week at the spring dinner meeting of the Mercer County Farm Bureau.

Jackson is the program analyst for food and agriculture for the Undersecretary of Infrastructure Preparedness.

After 20 years as a private veterinarian and 37 years in the U.S. Army, he finds himself known as an “un-bureaucrat with an entrepreneurial spirit” inside the beltway. While being on active duty in Afghanistan, he worked on a humanitarian mission and collected samples of foot and mouth disease (FMD) virus so that a viable vaccine could be developed for that country.

The Department of Defense (DOD) protects us from foreign enemies abroad, Jackson said. The Department of Homeland Security protects us at home. The department isn’t just about terrorism. It is about any kind of disaster the United States might encounter.

“The job of DHS is to help us protect ourself,” he said.

As Jackson shared his story he showed a picture of a typical Afghan farm. The son of the farmer is plowing with a wooden plow with one tin plow shear pulled by two oxen or steers. The landscape is similar to Jackson’s home state of Utah, but what is not in the picture is the young man’s father using a cell phone. The country is a land of contrasts, he said.

Eighty-five percent of their agriculture is livestock, mostly sheep and goats. The livestock raising is the largest legitimate industry in Afghanistan. In the top industry, the Afghans have been raising poppies for more than 6,000 years. The farmers there would raise something else but raising poppies pays the bills and buys shoes and books for the farmers’ children. There is also a huge infrastructure that supports poppy production, including the great demand for the derivative drug, heroin, in this country.

What Jackson learned about the infrastructure of Afghanistan prepared him to work on protection of the American infrastructure.

“We are trying to reduce the vulnerability of critical infrastructure to terrorism,” Jackson said.

The DHS bureau dealing with infrastructure is divided into 18 topic areas. Jackson’s work in Food and Agriculture has been to coordinate federal and state government agencies with private agricultural industry organizations.

Though Jackson came to the department with veterinarian medicine and an understanding of large animals, he had no background in crops or the food industry. “I am learning a lot,” Jackson said.

As the department develops, it is working to enable the national response, timely preparedness and rapid recovery to an attack, natural disasters and other emergencies. One of Jackson’s main projects is to help develop the National Infrastructure Protection Plan.

DHS was given the challenge of bringing different agencies and departments of the government together to work on this plan. In the past they had been rivals, jealous of each other and at times hating each other, Jackson said. This was especially true of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).

Other agencies included are: Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Health and Human Services (HHS), Department of Defense (DOD) and Department of Interior and the comparable agencies on the state level. These agencies make up the Government Coordinating Council (GCC).

There is also a Sector Coordinating Council made up of industry organization representatives. Its job is to watch over the GCC to be sure that they don’t do anything stupid so that the industry can stay in business, Jackson said.