KHYBER: With a majority of growers in Bara tehsil here inclined more towards cultivating poppy on their fields until only a decade ago-the same period during which they’re displaced from homes due to terrorism, the displacement proved to be a proverbial “blessing in disguise.”

Now, they have successfully switched over to developing orchards on their agricultural lands.

For 40-year-old Abdul Wahid, it was quite a healthy change as he decided to grow 120 guava plants of mixed variety over his family’s 28 kanals of land in Malakdinkhel area of Bara.

It’s the first experience of its kind in any part of Khyber tribal district as nobody had taken the “risk” of cultivating guava on their lands in the region.

“To be very honest, we had never thought of abandoning poppy cultivation as that being a ‘cash crop’ for the majority of Bara and Tirah farmers,” he told Dawn.

Official says vertical farming ‘financially productive’

He said the locals had second thoughts after coming back in 2015-16 as the local agriculture department had arranged for them training courses and capacity building programmes in order to persuade them to other lucrative and competitive crops and fruit orchards on their fields which were considered as very fertile for such ventures.

The grower said his guava orchard was fully grown with most plants having started giving fruits twice a year, which were sufficient to financially sustain their family of 15 people, which included his four brothers, who were also full-time farmers.

“We are now fully focusing on newly-grown guava orchard and another comparatively small orchard of apricot as we have stopped growing other crops on our land except for some selected vegetables as part of ‘inter-crop’ strategy which was taught to us by the agriculture department in order to cater for our daily demand of domestic vegetables,” he said.

Agricultural experts say guava trees typically bear fruit twice a year and this characteristic makes guava cultivation beneficial for farmers as they can harvest the fruit twice a year and thus maximising their yield and profit.

Mohammad Haleem, another farmer from Bar Qambarkhel area of Bara, has developed a lemon orchard over one acre of his family land and is quite content with the yield of his first harvest.

“Earlier, we used to grow wheat and different vegetables on our fields, using conventional farming, which could hardly cater to our financial expenditures due to rising inflation,” he said.

He added that provision of free lemon plants and barbed wire by the agriculture department for its protection fulfilled his longtime dream.

Khyber agriculture officer Abid Shah told Dawn that farmers in all seven merged districts and six former Frontier Regions were motivated towards growing fruits orchards, vertical farming and kitchen gardening through the federal and provincial governments’ joint venture of Integrated Agriculture Development under the Accelerated Implementation Programme (AIP) with its Tribal Decade Strategy devised in 2019, a year after the erstwhile Fata was merged with Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

He said the strategy had proved very successful in all districts as orchard farming and vertical farming were rapidly adopted by local farmers owing to its financially productive nature.

Mr Shah said that the new strategy of developing fruit orchards was a departure from the previous failed experiment of scattered distribution of fruit plants amongst individuals when most plants would vanish due to a lack of better and organised care.

He said the idea and implementation of vertical farming proved so successful that farmers in Bajaur, Mohmand and Khyber districts had started export of different varieties of vegetable with pea grown in Bara and bitter gourd cultivated in parts of Mohmand topping the list of exported vegetables.

“You will be surprised to know that dried chilies, grown in the remote Loe Shalman bordering region of Khyber, are now exported to India while capsicum grown in Bajaur has rising demand in Gulf countries,” he told Dawn.

Mr Shah said citrus fruits and guava, produced in Bara orchards, and different types of vegetables, including the best variety of tomato grown in agricultural fields on Malagori, were sold at all major fruit and vegetable markets, much to the delight and financial profit of local farmers.

He said that sites for orchard cultivation are selected after a thorough study of the soil and climatic condition of a particular region while taking into account the willingness of local farmers to adopt new techniques in vertical farming and growing orchards on their fields while also distancing themselves from cultivating banned and hazardous crops.

“The new strategy of attracting local farmers is meant to compensate and facilitate the terrorism-affected families of merged districts as these people will apply primitive methods of farming while cultivating low income generating crops on their fields,” he said.

The official said that with rapid population in most tribal districts, agricultural lands were rapidly converted into housing colonies and commercial plazas.

“In order to fulfil the growing population’s dietary needs, the department of agriculture extension started work on vertical and tunnel technologies as well as establishment of orchards of different fruits that were welcomed by most farmers,” he said.

Published in Dawn, April 13th, 2025