Efforts Underway to Increase Fruit Gardens in Afghanistan

The officials in the Ministry of Agriculture say that they are trying to increase the number of fruit gardens across the country.

“We try to improve the gardeners’ benefits by increasing the number of fruit gardens in overall the country,” said Akbar Rostami, the Spokesperson for the Agriculture Ministry.

Officials say that the fruit harvests have considerably improved to thousand tons this year and the domestic market was good enough.

Gardeners have sold their harvests valued millions of Afghanis, Rostami adds.

11,000 tons of peach were produced this year, the official further said.

“Creating the peach gardens is one of the main plans of the ministry so that we can bring the gardens’ harvest to the market with good price in the spring,” he said.

Experts say that annually lots of fresh fruits valued millions of dollars are being imported to the country and the government has to provide the market for the domestic fruits.

“We have provided the grounds to export the country’s fresh fruits through building standard fridges, doing marketing, and standard packaging,” said Hakimullah Sediqqe, an economic expert.

This comes as the price of some vegetables and fruits have unprecedentedly reduced in the country this year.

Recently, the price of each kilogram of fruits like watermelon and vegetables like okra and tomato reduced to 1 and 3 Afghanis in Farah province.