KABUL: Farm hands place mounds of bright red pomegranates into shipping boxes stamped with ‘Product of Afghanistan’ on the side. The price and quality of the sweet fruit are up, and the farmers are happy about a new storage facility that has extended their selling season.

The advances in the pomegranate trade are a sliver of good news from a region of Afghanistan known more for its Taliban attacks and thriving opium trade.

Ubaidullah Jan, a 50-year-old farmer from the Arghandab area just north of Kandahar, said the price his pomegranates command has doubled this year to about $1.20 a kilogram, due to the new cold storage facility and quality control programs implemented by the US Agency for International Development, or USAID.

“The goods we are selling with the help of USAID, and being able to keep them in cold storage have brought a tremendous change in our business,” Jan said, adding his goods are being sent to Dubai, Pakistan, India and Singapore.

Scarred by an almost perpetual state of conflict since 1980, Afghanistan has only one truly successful export: opium and the heroin that’s made from it.

The country produced 8,200 tons of opium in 2007, up 34 per cent from last year’s record harvest. Farmers this year can make $5,200 per hectare of opium poppy; wheat yields about $550 per hectare. The value of the opium trade for Afghanistan farmers this year stands at $1 billion.

The value of all of Afghanistan’s legal exports in 2006, meanwhile, was $193 million, with animal hides and wool skins topping the list at $21 million. The overall legal export market has increased an average of 28 per cent a year over the last four years and will continue to expand, said Loren Owen Stoddard, director of alternative development and agriculture for USAID.

Afghanistan’s fruit and vegetables in particular have a lot of potential, he said. The ‘perceived value’ of Afghan pomegranates and other fruits is high in regional markets.

“Talk to an Indian fruit seller and he’ll instinctively know that (Afghan pomegranates) are the best in the world,” Stoddard said. ‘’When we show up the reaction is, ‘Oh, these are the great Afghan products I used to buy’.”

In Kandahar, USAID is spending $6.6 million on agricultural and marketing assistance programs for producers of fresh and dried fruits and nuts.

The goal is sustained economic growth that can help reduce and eventually eliminate poppy cultivation. About 330 vineyards and orchards have been developed in Kandahar, and 51 dry raisin sheds have been rehabilitated through the program. Next year 12,500 grape vines will be planted.

Farming in Afghanistan holds its challenges. Pomegranate farmers from Arghandab district abandoned their fields en masse earlier this month and headed toward the relative safety of Kandahar city after Taliban fighters moved into the region for several days.

USAID opened the cold storage facility in September and is trying to increase contacts with potential buyers in overseas markets. Farmers are being taught to grow their raisins away from Kandahar’s dusty earth; cleaner raisins can fetch up to four times more at market.

Western aid workers dress in local outfits and travel around the province to help connect buyers and sellers.

“War creates a lack of communication and so some of what our guys are doing is reintroducing Afghans to buyers who have changed over 30 years,” Stoddard said.

So far, the program has helped ship 690 tons of pomegranates to India, 600 tons to Pakistan and 36 tons to Dubai, mostly on outgoing military flights.—AP