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When you think of saffron, dark red strands from Spain or Iran may come to mind. But the delicate spice, one of the most expensive and labor-intensive in the world, grows well in another country long plagued by conflict: Afghanistan.

Rumi Spice, a small, enterprising company in Brighton, Mass., is trying to build an Afghan saffron connection for lovers of the spice in the U.S., and cultivate peace through trade.

Behind Rumi Spice is a group of veterans who served in Afghanistan who are now business school students, a lawyer, an Afghan water specialist and farmers the vets met while serving there.

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Saffron farmers Haji Zarghon (left) and Haji Ebrahim speak with Abdul Shakhoor Ehrarri, a water applications specialist for Rumi Spice, in Herat Province, Afghanistan during the harvest on Nov. 22, 2014. Abdul Shakhoor Ehrarri/Courtesy of Rumi Spice hide caption

itoggle caption Abdul Shakhoor Ehrarri/Courtesy of Rumi Spice

Saffron farmers Haji Zarghon (left) and Haji Ebrahim speak with Abdul Shakhoor Ehrarri, a water applications specialist for Rumi Spice, in Herat Province, Afghanistan during the harvest on Nov. 22, 2014.

Abdul Shakhoor Ehrarri/Courtesy of Rumi Spice

The idea for the fledgling company came about in March 2013, when Army veteran Kimberly Jung was chatting with a fellow vet named Keith Alaniz. Alaniz told her about how when serving in Afghanistan, he met a local saffron farmer who had a warehouse full of the valuable spice, with no buyers lined up overseas.

"I was very surprised to find out it grows the best in the climates of Afghanistan with hot winds and dry climate," Jung tells The Salt. "So, I immediately thought, hey, this could be an awesome business opportunity."

Jung and Alaniz teamed up with four others, and the team realized that if it could create a viable market for saffron in the U.S., they could also transform saffron into a cash crop that might one day replace poppy, the crop used to make opium that helps fund the Taliban.

"Without investment in agriculture, Afghan farmers have little prospects with shrinking land allotments - making them susceptible to the Taliban," the group's website reads. "Rumi Spice strives to change this dynamic."

Saffron ranges wildly in price, but on average goes for about $15 a gram, or $1,500 a pound. Despite that high price, the typical Afghan saffron grower earns just $400 to $600 annually. Rumi Spice says it expects it can help small-scale farmers triple their income through fair-trade tactics of cutting out the middle men.

The Salt

These 5 Crops Are Still Hand-Harvested, And It's Hard Work

The company says it will also reinvest at least 10 percent of profits back into infrastructure, like processing facilities and machines, which Jung represents a continuation of the civil affairs and infrastructural development work she began as a soldier. "This was a very natural extension of what I thought we needed to be doing in Afghanistan," says Jung.

In July 2013, Jung hand-carried their first shipment of saffron directly from the farmers in Herat and Wardak Provinces all the way back to the U.S. During the early stages of Rumi Spice, Jung drove around in her car peddling saffron to local farmers markets and gourmet shops in the Boston area.

"For me that's my target market, my target channel – boutique and gourmet grocers, for people who care where and who picks their food and how these people are treated," says Jung. Rumi Spice now sells to three towns in Massachusetts: Brookline, Lexington and Cambridge.

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Saffron flowers on a farm in Herat, Afghanistan. It takes about 200,000 stigmas from the saffron crocus flower to make one pound of saffron. Majid Saeedi/Getty Images hide caption

itoggle caption Majid Saeedi/Getty Images

Saffron flowers on a farm in Herat, Afghanistan. It takes about 200,000 stigmas from the saffron crocus flower to make one pound of saffron.

Majid Saeedi/Getty Images

Abbdul Shakoor Ehrarri is a water specialist based in Herat, Afghanistan who facilitates growing and agricultural operations for Rumi Spice. He says he sees this is an opportunity to help local farmers in his country and ensure they receive fair value for their hard work.

"Since I heard that [Rumi Spice] was planning to work with the farmers I was really excited because nowadays the farmers are poor," says Ehrarri.

Growing saffron requires a lot of land, and a lot of labor for hand-harvesting. Each saffron flower has three stigmas, and it takes around 200,000 stigmas to get one pound of saffron. The high value and limited supply have also helped create varying levels of quality, as well as a market for counterfeit saffron.

"You have no idea where it comes from, and they give you all kinds of certifications that I don't trust, and that's the story of most of the saffron in the world," said Philippe De Vienne, a professional spice hunter and CEO of Epices De Cru, a Montreal-based spice company. "Meeting Rumi, it was like 'Wow, somebody opened a window and let some fresh air into the house!' "

Rumi Spice's saffron has a feel-good story, but it's also a consistently high-quality product, says De Vienne. "The color is beautiful, the flavor is exceptional," he says. "You can see the craftsmanship in every stem of saffron ... it's 100 percent the right kind of stigma and it's top quality."

However, more than having the right shape, look and color what really counts is the smell and taste, says De Vienne.

Rumi Spice has begun selling their saffron online, following the late-November harvest.

James Clark is a visuals intern at NPR and a former Marine.

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Afghanistan

The United Nations Children's Fund calls 2014 a devastating year for children, reporting that as many as 15 million young people are caught in conflicts in the Central African Republic, Iraq, South Sudan, the Palestinian territories, Syria and Ukraine.

Among the grim statistics in a newly released UNICEF report: There are more than 1.7 million child refugees from the conflict in Syria, and 105 children have been killed in the more than 35 attacks on schools in that country. In the Central African Republic, as many as 10,000 children are believed to have been recruited by armed groups in the past year and more than 430 have been killed or maimed.

"Children have been killed while studying in the classroom and while sleeping in their beds," says UNICEF Executive Director Anthony Lake. "They have been orphaned, kidnapped, tortured, recruited, raped and even sold as slaves.

South Sudan, a new nation that is in the midst of a nearly year-long conflict, has seen almost 750,000 children displaced and several hundred thousand more forced to flee across borders. Amid fears of famine in South Sudan, an estimated 235,000 children under the age of 5 are suffering from acute malnutrition.

The conflict between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas this summer in Gaza left about 54,000 Palestinian children homeless and 538 dead.

Aid groups have been stretched thin by the sheer number of conflicts and the long-simmering ones that have faded from the headlines. UNICEF says the Ebola outbreak in West Africa presents yet another threat. Thousands of children have been orphaned and, according to UNICEF, some 5 million are out of school in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.

UNICEF says it is responding where it can, trying to get children back to school in places such as the Central African Republic and working in Ebola-hit countries to try to prevent the spread of the disease.

Still, the report makes for grim reading. It notes that an estimated 230 million children live in countries where there are armed conflicts, from Iraq to Nigeria.

As Lake puts it, "Never in recent memory have so many children been subjected to such unspeakable brutality."

UNICEF

refugees

Here's a fact that might surprise you: All of the top 10 U.S. companies that were born on the Internet — including Google, Amazon, eBay — have overseas corporate headquarters in Ireland.

The American tech sector is huge in Ireland. It's growing rapidly — and having a huge impact on life there.

But the tax system that's fueling the growth is also infuriating some people in the U.S. and Europe — and has Ireland reconsidering its tax code.

A City, And Country, Transformed

Cork is one of the places benefiting from the U.S. tech boom. The Irish city is home to 120,000 people — as well as Apple's only global corporate headquarter outside the United States. That headquarters — all gleaming metal and glass — employs 4,000 people.

Apple didn't have anybody available to talk with us, so we asked the neighbors what life is like in the shadow of the giant.

Shane Galway, an electrician who works across the street, says it's had a big impact. Roads have been built specifically for it; recent VIP visitors have included the head of the Irish government and Apple CEO Tim Cook.

And the impact on the economy stretches far beyond the 4,000 people who work for Apple. Galway, for instance, used to do electrical work at Apple headquarters, even though the company never employed him directly.

Christina Brannagh is a local English teacher. She says a lot of her students work for Apple.

"We even teach English at Apple, because a lot of them don't have English as a first language," she says.

At a real estate office called Trading Places, Gina O'Donovan says she always knows when the U.S. tech workers walk in the door.

"They're usually quite trendy and very, very nice and polite," she says. "Whereas the Irish are a bit more — I suppose, not as polite, you know?"

Twitter is among the tech giants that have hung out their shingle in Ireland. Stephen McIntyre, the managing director of Twitter in Ireland, is shown here in 2013 after the company announced 100 new jobs at its European headquarters, located in Dublin. Niall Carson /PA Photos/Landov hide caption

itoggle caption Niall Carson /PA Photos/Landov

She says the city has transformed. Home prices are up. There are more diverse restaurants and trendier bars — another place the tech arrivals stand out.

"They try to adjust to the drinking, but it doesn't always work very well for them, I'm afraid," O'Donovan says. "We're more hardened at that."

The changes in Cork are playing out across Ireland. These days, you can find company towns all over the country — where the companies are American tech firms. In Limerick, it's Dell, which employs 2,500. In Dublin, IBM has a couple thousand employees and Google has around 3,000.

Twitter arrived in Dublin about three years ago. It's now the company's largest office outside the U.S., with more than 200 staff.

Stephen McIntyre is the managing director of Twitter in Ireland, the company's European headquarters.

"We've doubled in the last year, and we're expecting that growth to continue over the forthcoming years," he says.

So what attracts all these tech firms to Ireland?

If you ask people like McIntyre, they'll tell you it's a variety of things: the experience of other companies, the availability of skilled talent, the business-friendly environment.

But if you ask someone like Bob Goulder, with the nonprofit group Tax Analysts, why these U.S. companies are in Ireland, you'll get a much shorter answer.

"Because they don't have to pay a lot of tax," he says.

The Lure Of Big Financial Breaks

Ireland charges U.S. companies only a third of what they'd pay in America.

"There's a huge differential between profits being taxed at 35 percent in the United States and being taxed at only 12.5 percent in Ireland," he says.

And those are just the official rates. In reality, Goulder says, some American companies pay less than 2 percent tax on their profits in Ireland.

Take Apple, for instance.

"According to their own disclosures, they currently have $137 billion sitting offshore, indefinitely reinvested outside the United States," Goulder says.

That makes American lawmakers furious. At a hearing last year, senators accused Apple CEO Tim Cook of dodging taxes.

Cook insisted his company does no such thing.

"We pay all the taxes we owe. Every single dollar," he told them. "We not only comply with the laws, but we comply with the spirit of the laws."

Young professionals in Ireland understand how the country is perceived.

Sean Brannagh, an American web developer who moved to Cork, likens it to a "duty-free zone, but for companies."

Traffic on the streets of Cork city center in southern Ireland. Paul Faith/AFP/Getty Images hide caption

itoggle caption Paul Faith/AFP/Getty Images

His friend Seamus Obuadhachain is getting his doctorate in artificial intelligence.

"I have friends who have graduated in the last couple of years who've gone to work for companies like Facebook and Microsoft and Yahoo who all base themselves in Ireland, and they know that it's explicitly because of the tax laws which are lax over here," Obuadhachain says. "Everyone knows this, but we benefit from it, we're not complaining."

Of Complaints, And Change

People outside of Ireland are complaining — and not only members of Congress. The European Commission recently started an investigation into whether Ireland's tax arrangements with Apple amount to illegal state aid.

A couple months ago, Ireland's finance minister, Michael Noonan, acknowledged that his country has a perception problem.

"Aggressive tax planning by multinational companies has been criticized by governments across the globe and has damaged the reputation of many countries," he said.

He announced that he is changing a policy known as the "Double Irish" that lets some companies base themselves in Ireland but register for tax purposes in an overseas tax haven.

"I am abolishing the ability of companies to use the Double Irish by changing our residency rules to require all companies registered in Ireland to also be a tax resident in Ireland," Noonan said.

But companies already in Ireland won't have to make that change for another six years. And Ireland is introducing a new provision known as a "patent box" that may reduce the tax bill for these companies even more.

Through all of this, nobody accuses tech companies of actually breaking the law.

"The outrage is not what's illegal," says Goulder, the tax expert. "The outrage is what's perfectly legal."

Ireland

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Hog parts are displayed on a table during a workshop for female butchers in Chapel Hill, NC. Leoneda Inge/North Carolina Public Radio hide caption

itoggle caption Leoneda Inge/North Carolina Public Radio

Hog parts are displayed on a table during a workshop for female butchers in Chapel Hill, NC.

Leoneda Inge/North Carolina Public Radio

Kari Underly is slicing through half a hog as if it were as soft as an avocado ... until she hits a bone.

"So what I'm doing now is I'm taking out the femur bone," she explains to a roomful of about 30 women watching as she carves the animal. "The ham is a little bit of a drag, if you will, 'cause we have to make money, and not everybody wants a big ham."

Underly is a fit, 46-year-old master butcher from Chicago. Her father and grandmothers were butchers. She put herself through college cutting meat. These days, she encourages other women to enter the business.

The meat industry has always needed women, but for generations, women have worked for low pay in slaughterhouses, or in other support positions. Now, a small but growing number of American women are taking ownership in the meat business.

The Salt

Everything But The Squeal: How The Hog Industry Cuts Food Waste

Underly, who runs a meat training company called Range Incorporated, was recently in Chapel Hill, N.C., demonstrating to about 30 women how to slice and dice the tastiest and most profitable parts of a hog.

"You just want to be careful," she advises the women gathered around. "There's the scapula bone right here, and we want to make sure we don't wreck it."

Tootie Jones was one of the women leaning in as Underly sawed, hacked and sliced. "She's a knife-wielding rock star in her own right, and has quite a following," says Jones, referring to Underly. Jones owns a cattle ranch in West Virginia.

"And I think one thing Kari's done is inspired a lot of people to go out, pick up a knife, learn how to handle a knife and to go out and develop a business," says Jones.

In addition to demonstrations like this, Underly organizes "Grrl's Meat Camps." She says the meat industry is changing in a way that now allows room for more women.

The Salt

'Test Kitchen': How To Buy The Safest Meat And Make The Juiciest Steaks

The Salt

No 'Misteak': High Beef Prices A Boon For Drought-Weary Ranchers

"Meat production has always been a male job, just because of the sheer size" of the animals involved, she explains. "It's a physical job — actually being able to lift these large animals. But as we're choosing to buy meat closer to home, we're looking for more craftsmen, if you will, to be the butcher, so we can get them on every corner."

She's echoed by Sarah Blacklin, director of NC Choices, a nonprofit in North Carolina that's trying to build more local meat supply chains. "That has opened up this avenue for not just the raising of the meat, but the selling, the marketing, the distributions," says Blacklin. "I think it's a natural avenue for women to move into."

In North Carolina, the number of people raising and selling their own meat has gone from a few dozen, a decade ago, to more than 800 today. It's unclear how many of them are women, but one of those businesspeople is Jennifer Curtis.

In a chilly walk-in storage cooler in Durham, Curtis watches as fresh beef is tagged for distribution. Then she reaches down and picks up a thick chunk of dark red meat: "Oh my gosh, have you had this before? It's Osso Buco, or beef shank," she tells me. "It's right down there, close to the ankle. It's got a lot of bone in it, bone marrow, just fantastic for braising and stewing, beautiful flavor."

Curtis is the co-CEO of Firsthand Foods, along with another woman. She got into the meat wholesale business four years ago, after meeting too many farmers having trouble marketing their meat.

"We were also meeting more and more chefs who wanted fresh local meat but couldn't get enough from an individual farmer," says Curtis. "So I thought, there needs to be a business right here in the middle."

Curtis says 90 percent of the people that she works with are men — farmers, processors and chefs.

"We run into a lot of men," she explains, "and it's taken some time for them to get used to the fact that we own this company and we're selling the meat. But it's been good."

She says it has taken a long time to build trust, especially among cattle ranchers in what she calls the "old boy network." But Curtis says she proved to them that she could get them top dollar for their product. And that's the bottom line.

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