The US Department of Agriculture is giving UC Davis and four other universities $5 million for the revitalization project. 

"The agriculture, as you might expect under the conditions of a warn-torn country, has pretty much fallen apart."

Jim Hill is the associate dean of UCD’s College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences. He says they’ll be training Iraqi nationals on how to enhance production of certain crops – all of which are also grown in California.

"There’s hardly any crop that we don’t grow here so we’re the only one in the group in fact the only one in the United States that grows pistachios, dates and some of the vegetables that are grown in Iraq."

UC Davis experts will also train Arabic-speaking specialists in Jordan and Egypt who will carry the information to Iraqi farmers.