“Jobs were scarce in Passab Village, except during the poppy harvest. So was food for my family. I spent my days looking for work. Now I work in my own greenhouse. I grow cucumbers year-round and sell when prices are high. My family has fresh cucumbers whenever they want. Without my greenhouse, I would still be working in the poppy fields.”
Mr. Assadullah is a 27-year-old greenhouse farmer in Zheray district of Kandahar Province. Before 2015, he was a farm laborer, struggling to support his parents and seven brothers and sisters. He says, “Jobs were scarce in Passab Village, except during the poppy harvest. So was food for my family. I spent my days looking for work. Now I work in my own greenhouse.”
In 2015, Blumont’s USAID-funded Kandahar Food Zone (KFZ) program built Asaddullah a 200 square meter greenhouse with drip irrigation, and taught him about seeds, fertilizers and low-cost pest controls. Every month, KFZ agronomists inspected the greenhouse, and he talked with them about vegetable production and markets.
His first cucumber harvest in 2015 was disappointing. It produced 225 kg. and sold for $97. Fungus damaged his next two crops, which produced only 138 kg. and sold for $38. In December 2016, he harvested 350 kg., sold them for $158 and immediately replanted, hoping to sell before the main harvest season when prices fall and profits are lost.
In KFZ greenhouse training, Assadullah learned about the high yields of hybrid vegetables and their resistance to pests and diseases. He invested $125 in hybrid cucumber seed and fertilizer. “This was my fifth crop. In April I harvested 785 kg. and sold them for $380. Then I bought food for Ramadan and new clothes for Eid.”
KFZ continues to provide technical assistance to greenhouse farmers in seven districts of Kandahar. Assadullah says, “I grow cucumbers year-round and sell when prices are high. My family has fresh cucumbers whenever they want. Without my greenhouse, I would still be working in the poppy fields.”
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