GARDEZ (SW) – A number of bee breeders in Paktia say that they put a lot of effort into breeding bees, but there is no suitable market to sell honey.
Sediqullah, who owns a bee breeding farm in the “Tira Kandu” area of Gardiz city, the center of Paktia, says that although honey production has decreased this year due to the drought, but its quality has improved compared to the past. He adds that he currently has 300 beehive boxes in his farm and this year he was able to obtain about 5000 kilograms of honey from these boxes.
Sediqullah emphasizes that although a lot of honey is produced in Paktia, but low-quality honey is also imported from Pakistan, which has weakened their sales market.
He says: “Big markets should be built here so that traders don’t go to Pakistan and come to Afghanistan to buy honey from here. Now there is no merchant, there is no market. We have collected 500 barrels of honey from 300 bee boxes, which have remained in the house because there is no merchant to buy honey. There is no market here to give them honey.”
According to Siddiqullah, due to the lack of a suitable market inside and outside the country, Pakistani traders buy the honey produced in Afghanistan and then export it to other countries in the name of Pakistan.
Saiful Rahman, another bee breeder in Paktia, also says that Pakistani honey is of poor quality and is sold at a low price in the markets that is why people do not want to buy native honey. He adds: “If they come to the market, if it is Iranian or Pakistani honey, it has a great impact on our market. It has also ruined our rates. People don’t buy real honey anymore.”
Meanwhile, the officials in Paktia’s Department of Agriculture, Irrigation and Livestock, say that they have started their efforts to market Afghan honey inside and outside the country.
Najibullah Mehrabi, general manager at Department of Agriculture, Irrigation and Livestock of Paktia, says that the bee breeders in this province take their boxes to Pakistan in the winter and in the spring when they bring the bees, a number of people use the name of the farms, but imports Pakistani honey.
According to him, in order to prevent the import of Pakistani honey, they have started the process of registering bee farms. “Now we want to distribute cards to them so that the products of our country and from Pakistan can be identified. We measure all our beehives accurately to find out how much it is in Pakistan because we haven’t counted them yet. That’s why everyone comes and says that I have a bee box there, but we haven’t traveled there yet to see if there is a farm or not. Prevention is done in the same way.”
According to the Paktia Department of Agriculture, there are currently 338 bee breeding farms operating in this province, in which there are about 48,000 bee boxes, and 300 tons of honey have been obtained from these farms this year.
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