We went in to change their lifestyle, and taught them to eat everything they grew, and grow everything they ate. More importantly, we found them sources of water, offered them an alternative livelihood. In Afghanistan, we worked with goats and sheep, creating goat and sheep banks, similar to the black pig bank in Doi Tung. That is to say, we provided them with breeding stock, and when they gave birth, they had to give back three lambs, which could then be rotated to others. We didn’t even spend all the capital; the sheep bank worked by rotation, with the sheep population increasing all the time.We even made “bare-foot vets” out of villagers who could neither read nor write. At first, the death rate of sheep was 30% per year. We aimed to reduce that to 3% a year, and we did. The sheep were an asset that could be exchanged for cash. When they realized that raising sheep was better than growing
opium, they gave up their opium crops.