KARACHI, Sept 20 Due to the lack of proper infrastructure and facilities, the state of dates' production in Khairpur district largely stands where it was at the time of independence, with the farmers resultantly missing out on a chunk of the lucrative international market, where demand for the fruit is increasing.

“We may have many scores to settle with India, but if that country was not there to import a major bulk of our dry dates (chooharas, that constitute about 75 per cent of the total dates produced in the district), growers in Khairpur would have been suffering huge losses.

“Even after 60 years, the district lacks basic infrastructure to store and process dates and growers are forced to dry large quantities of the fruit instead of preparing fresh dates, which have a huge local and international market.”

This is how Qadir Bux Marri, a date grower and district president, Sindh Chamber of Agriculture, vented his disappointment at government apathy when asked to pinpoint the problems date growers face in Khairpur.

Qadir's bitterness, however, is not unfounded. The district of Khairpur, despite having a significant share in the total dates produced in the country - that makes Pakistan the fourth largest producer of dates in the world - has no mechanical infrastructure to dehydrate, store and process the fruit. Resultantly, the post-harvest losses are very high.

“The government has no credit for what we are producing and exporting. We are as helpless and handicapped today as we were 60 years ago. Rain poses a great threat to the crop and, quite ironically, the period during which the crop gets ready for harvesting falls in the monsoon season,” Marri told Dawn.

In order to save their crop from the onslaught of rain, a large number of farmers in Sindh collect the hard, unripe dates and boil them to make chooharas after dehydrating them under the sun for four to five days. The half-ripe date is also dehydrated manually under the sun while for the rest, farmers have to wait till the fruit gets mature.

“We risk not only losing the entire crop on account of rain, but also suffer losses due to lack of proper harvest equipment. This year, farmers suffered about 30 to 35 per cent losses due to rain,” said Marri, adding that moisture causes fungus and reduces the fruit's quality.

Talking about the benefits of post-harvest technologies, Sardar Dein Phulphoto, president, Sindh Date Growers Association, said that it would enhance the fruit's quality and it would fetch a better price in the market.

“Ideally, we should be producing 70pc fresh dates and 30pc chooharas. But it's the other way round. This is because we don't have the infrastructure to keep dates fresh and sell them in the market. There is no mechanical operation at about 15 to 20 date processing factories in Thehri, a few kilometres away from Khairpur, and all the work is done manually.”

Stillborn project

Ghulam Qasim Jaskani, another grower, said that the government had approved a Rs400 million project to set up a model dehydration plant that also had the provision of cold storage four years ago, but work was never initiated.

“The horticulture board was supposed to start the project and was also allotted land for this purpose, too. After four years' dilly-dallying, the board has now got the excuse that the project cost has increased and more money is required.” Pakistan's performance as a date producing country can be gauged from the 2006-07 statistics of the Trade Development Authority of Pakistan. According to the figures, the country's production of dates is over 612,000 metric tons annually. However, it earns only $4.8 million from ripe dates and $33.54 million from dry dates.

India stands as a major buyer of dry dates, where they are used in religious rituals. The rest are sold at low prices in the international market where non-date producing countries like France import dates at cheap rates from Third World countries, and then re-export the dates after grading and processing them for five times the value of the imports.

Pointing out the reasons why Pakistani dates fetch low prices in the international market, Qadir Bux Marri said that one of the reasons was that the produce was sold in bulk, besides having only one variety in the market.

“Aseel is the only variety that is being exported. We have a number of good varieties, especially in Balochistan, that could be grown on a larger scale and exported, but farmers need support in this respect. The banks need to provide farmers with interest-free loans, for at least a period of five years till the plant gets mature, to experiment with new varieties.

“The world's demand for fresh dates is increasing. Apart from setting up storage and processing units, the government must also establish a research institute and infrastructure to develop tissue culture techniques that can help reduce the plant maturation period of five to six years to half. There is also a need to set up a dry port to sell half-ripe dates that are wasted due to lack of storage facilities,” concluded Marri.