Drought or bumper crop, woes stay for Afghan farmers

KABUL, Afghanistan

After a crippling drought that hit Afghanistan for several years, the country has recorded a bumper crop this year, thanks to better perspiration.

Flush with their harvest, the farmers are again in a dilemma, now forced to sell their produce at throwaway prices, for want of storage and trade facilities.

But the robust social media manned by young Afghans have come to their rescue to some extent, devising creative campaigns and raising awareness among people to buy home grown produce.

In western Farah province bordering Iran, a local farmer Mohammad Ibrahim, told Anadolu Agency that he had no other option, but to sell his watermelons as low as 15 Afghani ($ 0.20) for want of cold storage facility. “We could not store the watermelons as there are no cold storages available, so we sold them below the production cost,” he said.

This misery of the local farmers was taken up by the social media users, who drew attention of top officials, including President Mohammad Ashraf Ghani.

They also led a national campaign to promote domestic horticulture products. An array of creative promotional campaigns were launched by Afghan youth. They included serving juicy watermelons in Kabul, Herat and other parts of the country free of cost and also arranging fruit parties in official and public places.

“The prices have slightly improved in the past few days”, Ibrahim said, adding now the average price of a watermelon has surged to 60 Afghans ($ 0.80).

According to the country’s Ministry of Trade, the first watermelon consignment of 40 metric tons was dispatched to Azerbaijan last week. It has identified Azerbaijan and Turkey as potential markets for watermelons.

With fast-growing middle class, India has emerged a lucrative destination for the high-end Afghan farm products. Talking to Anadolu Agency, Akbar Rustami, spokesman for the Ministry of Agriculture, said contracts worth $75 million were inked with Indian traders at an agro-exhibition in India’s commercial capital Mumbai, in the past two days.

The climate of Afghanistan suits horticulture products and many high-end crops like raisins, pomegranates, apples, pistachios, chilgoza pine, almonds, and saffron. The drought that had hit the country past many years, had led large scale migrations of farmers, from the horticulture centers of Badghis, Ghor, Herat, Jawzjan, Faryab and Kandahar provinces to other areas.

Air Corridors for Trade

For decades, the landlocked Afghanistan heavily relied on Pakistan’s Karachi port for international trade. But the topsy-turvy relations between the two neighbors has forced the Kabul to seek alternatives.

On June 24, Afghanistan established a trade air corridor with Sharjah, the third largest city in the UAE. In partnership with Turkish Airlines, Afghanistan has managed to establish similar air corridors over the past year, with a number of major cities in the Gulf, Central Asia, Turkey and China. The efforts are underway to reach to Europe and the U.S. markets as well.

This idea was coined by President Ghani, a former World Bank economist, who has been pursuing an ambitious business strategy. He has issued directions to all diplomatic missions as well as ministries to promote Afghan products and explore new markets, to double the volume of exports from current $ 1 billion to $ 2 billion.

“The key to our economic independence is in the hands of farmers, especially women farmers and entrepreneurs … our main economic goal is to transform Afghanistan from an importing country into an exporting country of agriculture and other food products”, President Ghani told the National Agriculture Promotion Conference in Kabul a couple of weeks ago.