Mountain Fruits (Pvt.) Ltd
Introduction
"Local markets are important but the best price for our produce lies in countries far from here. Getting a Fairtrade deal for apricot farmers in these remote valleys is a lifeline."Sher Ghazi, Chief Executive, Mountain Fruits
Mountain Fruits (Pvt.) Ltd processes, packs and exports dried apricots which it purchases from the Mountain Areas Fruit Farmers’ Association, a group of 2,000 farming families located in the mountainous Northern Areas of Pakistan. The company evolved from a rural development programme and retains its mission to improve the incomes and opportunities for isolated farming communities in the area.
Sher Ghazi is the CEO and driving force behind Mountain Fruits. He visited the UK during Fairtrade Fortnight 2007 to share his experiences of Fairtrade and how it works for fruit and nut growing communities in Pakistan.
Sher Ghazi was born in the Hunza Valley in the Karakoram Mountains of Northern Pakistan. After graduating in food technology he joined the Aga Khan Rural Support Programme (AKRSP) in 1990 as a Project Forester then as a Project Agriculturist to assist rural communities in planting communal forests on collective land and increasing agricultural production. AKRSP is a charitable foundation which has worked to improve the livelihoods of people living in the higher areas of the Karakoram Mountains since 1982. As an orchard owner and fruit grower himself, Sher wanted to find a way to improve the livelihoods of poor farming communities in the mountains. He decided to research the potential for the production and marketing of high quality dried apricots and other fruits to take advantage of the abundant fruit grown in the area. AKRSP accepted Sher’s proposal to train farmers in the production of high quality fruit for processing, which in turn led to the establishment of Mountain Fruits Ltd.
Background
The apricot growers who supply Mountain Fruits are from the Chitral region and the Northern Areas, located in the Karakoram Mountains. Surrounded by the Pamir Mountains of Tajikistan to the north, the Himalayas of China and India to the east, and the Hindu Kush of Afghanistan to the west, the area is home to nine of the world’s highest peaks.
The sparsely populated Northern Areas were geographically and physically isolated until the opening in 1972 of the Karakoram Highway which links Beijing and Karachi. Until then there was no means of bringing in food from the outside, so local people survived on whatever grains they could grow, supplemented with nuts and abundant dried fruit – mainly apricots plus cherries, apples and pears.
However, the region remains politically and economically isolated because of the complex political situation. Since the partition of India and Pakistan in 1948, the Northern Areas have been administered by Pakistan as part of Pakistan Occupied Kashmir in the disputed territories of Jammu & Kashmir. But Pakistan has never ratified its accession of the Northern Areas in case India interpreted it as acceptance of the status quo in Kashmir. The Northern Areas therefore have no official constitutional status or political representation within Pakistan. The population does not enjoy the same fundamental legal, political and civil rights as other citizens of Pakistan and internal affairs are controlled by an unelected minister appointed by the federal government.
Due to the lack of government investment in infrastructure, the Northern Areas are one of the poorest and most neglected parts of Pakistan. There is virtually no industry and the majority of the population live in small villages scattered along glacial valleys where they rely on subsistence agriculture, often with little or no access to basic social services. Running water is virtually non-existent and 60% of the people make do without electricity in the long, extremely harsh winters. Political instability, entry restrictions on foreigners and lack of government investment have combined to restrict the growth of the tourist industry and exploitation of the area’s natural beauty.
AKRSP is working to improve this situation and has opened 147 small village schools and 40 clinics. It has set up women’s organisations to give a voice to women, who are isolated by cultural and religious traditions, to promote vaccination and family planning programmes and income –generating schemes such as rearing chickens and growing vegetables. AKRSP works with the men on small road construction, agricultural improvements and repair of vital irrigation channels.
Apricots are grown in this pure highland environment at between 4,500 and 9,500 feet on soil fed by glacial melt water, and benefit from long summer days to produce beautifully flavoured fruit.
The farming communities in the area are extremely poor, living in harsh environmental conditions where temperatures can soar to 47°C in the short summer and plunge to minus 12°C in winter. Farming in these extremely arid conditions is made possible only with irrigation that required digging 190k of water channels through mountain rock.
Farmers here produce a variety of fruit including apricots, apples, cherries, mulberries and peaches. They also grow nuts including almonds, walnuts and pine nuts.
But lack of infrastructure means the farmers cannot take full advantage of this abundance. The Karakoram Highway links northern mountain towns such as Gilgit with the main domestic market 600k away in Islamabad and also with China. However, the unreliable condition of the road and the highly perishable nature of the fruit, combined with the lack of cold storage and processing facilities, mean that most of the fruit is either left to rot at the farm before it can be consumed or dried and sold cheaply as a low quality fruit at poor local markets in the off season.
Development of Mountain Fruits Ltd
In 1997, UK based Tropical Wholefoods began working with Sher to provide invaluable technical assistance and support for the Dry Fruit Project for which he had secured AKRSP funding.
In March 2000, a training project was initiated by the AKRSP to improve the traditional but unhygienic method of sun-drying the fruit in order to meet internationally accepted standards. It included training farmers to collect the fruit in sheets rather than letting it fall to the ground, providing farmers with clean drying trays made from willow to keep the fruit off the ground during the minimum seven days’ drying process, and training in the post-drying washing of the fruit.
In 2002 a local landowner paid for the construction of a small processing factory, the costs of which will be repaid over a 10-year period. Apricots and other dried fruit are now collected from villages up to 300k away and delivered to the factory where they are processed, washed, graded and packed under the supervision of trained food technologists. The plant has the capacity to process 100 tonnes of dried fruit per season and also processes nuts during the winter season.
In 2004 the AKRSP Dry Fruit Project was registered as a dried fruit export business and was renamed Mountain Fruits (Pvt) Ltd. The company now trains farmers in the processing of fresh fruit into value-added dried commodities that are bought and marketed by Tropical Wholefoods and other importers. The modern processing methods create a product of international marketable standard, with greatly improved consistency of quality and food safety compared with traditional drying techniques.
Mountain Fruits now works with over 2,000 farming families to produce a variety of dried fruits, 800 of whom also produce nuts. Up to 100 female workers are seasonally employed in the factory – this is a rare opportunity for them to contribute to the family income as it is the only place in the Northern Areas where women can find paid work. They are engaged in fruit processing and packing and are, uniquely, paid in line with national minimum wage legislation. As there isn’t enough good land available to sustain a family, men supplement their farming income with casual work as electricians or builders, while others join the Pakistan Army or leave the area to find factory work.
Mountain Fruits also trains farmers in improved agricultural techniques such as organic farming. More recently it has developed a nut cracking machine which is used to crack walnuts and extract the edible kernels from apricot stones. It uses innovative, appropriate technology and can be taken from village to village, saving vast amounts of time compared to doing the job by hand. Similarly, an electric fruit dryer has been developed and installed in many villages. Operated by solar power, it is a simple oven-like device with rows of enclosed shelving that dries the fruit quickly while protecting it from contamination from insects, dust or rain.
These developments enable growers to increase production on the scarce land resources available to them. Because the farmers grow dozens of fruit varieties of varying quality, the company has developed a system of training village representatives as Master Trainers to promote the grafting of improved fruit tree varieties. Fifty-two people including three women have now been trained as Master Trainers. The project aims to expand by finding markets for other agricultural products grown by the farmers - honey, morel mushrooms and buck wheat flour - and thereby increase the incomes of poor communities from the sale of their high quality products.
Fairtrade & Mountain Fruits
Small-scale farmers must normally be organised into a democratic organisation with legal status to be eligible to join Fairtrade. Small producers who cannot fulfil this requirement, usually for product-related or cultural reasons, can join Fairtrade if they have a partnership with an intermediary organisation such as Mountain Fruits which is able and willing to contribute to their social and economic development. Mountain Fruits has organised the farmers into the Mountain Areas Fruit Farmers’ Association and is supporting its development into a strong and independent organisation that, in time, will be eligible for Fairtrade certification in its own right.
Fairtrade Premium Use
From the very beginning, Sher knew that adding value to the product was essential to increasing both income and market share and the policy of the company has always been to enter Fairtrade and organic markets. Selling apricots to the UK Fairtrade market means the farmers receive a guaranteed fair and stable price and an additional premium to invest in projects that benefit the farmers, their families and their communities.
Elected village representatives from the Mountain Areas Fruit Farmers’ Association come together to discuss and decide how to use the Fairtrade premium. In 2005, the Association received its first small premiums and, in consultation with Mountain Fruits management, selected a number of small projects in different communities:
- Purchase of an electricity generator for one village
- Purchase of a computer for a library
- Contributing to the construction costs of a joint-funded community school project
- Paying for the transport of sand and stones for two community school construction projects
- Paying the school fees of some of the poorest children
- Construction of a playground for schoolchildren
- Construction of a community hall
- Construction of a washroom for a community hall
- Purchase of a carpet for a community hall
- Covering an exposed community water storage tank
- Repair of irrigation channels
- Purchase of sewing machines and cloth for two women's vocational centres
- Purchase of more than 300 apricot plants for distribution among farmers
- Purchase and distribution of fruit trays and farm inputs to farmers on intrest-free credit or at cost price.
Where can I buy Mountain Fruits Dried Apricots?
Mountain Fruits dried apricots are available in the following products, details at
www.fairtrade.org.uk/products:
Traidcraft Dried Apricots, 250g pack
Traidcraft Raisins & Apricots, 30g pack
Tropical Wholefoods Sun Dried Apricots (Unsulphured) 200g pack
Tropical Wholefoods Sun Dried Apricots (Sulphured) 200g pack
Tropical Wholefoods Organic Mountain Apricots 50g
Tropical Wholefoods Organic Mountain Mix 40g
Tropical Wholefoods Organic Apricot and Kernel Snack Bar 40g
Mountain Apricots Organic 1kg pack
Mountain Apricots (Sulphured) 1kg pack
Traidcraft Dried Apricots, 250g pack
Traidcraft Raisins & Apricots, 30g pack
Tropical Wholefoods Sun Dried Apricots (Unsulphured) 250g pack
Tropical Wholefoods Sun Dried Apricots (Sulphured) 250g pack
Tropical Wholefoods Mountain Apricots 50g
Tropical Wholefoods Mountain Mix 40g
Mountain Apricots (Unsulphured) 1kg pack
Mountain Apricots (Sulphured) 1kg pack
Fairtrade Foundation April 2007
Look for the FAIRTRADE Mark on products. It’s your
guarantee that disavantaged farmers and workers in the developing world
are getting a better deal.