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Socio-economic characterisation of date palm (Phoenix dactylifera L.) growers and date value chains in Pakistan

Increasing food production to feed its rapidly growing population is a major policy goal of Pakistan. The production of traditional staples such as rice (Oryza sativa L.) and bread wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) has been intensified in many regions, but not in remote, drought-ridden areas. In these ar...

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Autores principales: Fatima, Ghayoor, Khan, Iqrar Ahmad, Buerkert, Andreas
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Springer International Publishing 2016
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4970996/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27536506
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s40064-016-2855-4
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author Fatima, Ghayoor
Khan, Iqrar Ahmad
Buerkert, Andreas
author_facet Fatima, Ghayoor
Khan, Iqrar Ahmad
Buerkert, Andreas
author_sort Fatima, Ghayoor
collection PubMed
description Increasing food production to feed its rapidly growing population is a major policy goal of Pakistan. The production of traditional staples such as rice (Oryza sativa L.) and bread wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) has been intensified in many regions, but not in remote, drought-ridden areas. In these arid, marginal environments dates and their by-products are an option to complement staples given their high nutritive value and storability. To fill knowledge gaps about the role of date palm in the household (HH) income of rural communities and the structure of date value chains, this project studied date palm production across six districts in four provinces of Pakistan. During 2012–2013 a total of 170 HHs were interviewed with a structured questionnaire using a snowball sampling approach. The results showed that most of the HH were headed by males (99 %) who were married (74 %) and often illiterate (40 %). Agriculture was the main occupation of date palm growers (56 %), while a few coupled agricultural activities with business (17 %) or extra-farm employment opportunities (government 9 %; private sector 8 %). Date sales contributed >50 % to the total income of 39 % of HH and 90–100 % to 24 % of HH. Overall farmers grew a total of 39 date palm cultivars and cultivated an average of 409 ± 559 mature date palms. The majority of the respondents sold dates to commission agents (35 %), contractors (22 %) and wholesalers (21 %), while 28 % of HH cultivated date palms only for self-consumption. Date palm growers had only limited knowledge about high quality date cultivars, optimized farm management and about effective post-harvest conservation. Changes in extension and marketing efforts are needed to allow farmers to better exploit value chains in date thereby reaping higher benefits from improved market access to secure their often marginal income.
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spelling pubmed-49709962016-08-17 Socio-economic characterisation of date palm (Phoenix dactylifera L.) growers and date value chains in Pakistan Fatima, Ghayoor Khan, Iqrar Ahmad Buerkert, Andreas Springerplus Research Increasing food production to feed its rapidly growing population is a major policy goal of Pakistan. The production of traditional staples such as rice (Oryza sativa L.) and bread wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) has been intensified in many regions, but not in remote, drought-ridden areas. In these arid, marginal environments dates and their by-products are an option to complement staples given their high nutritive value and storability. To fill knowledge gaps about the role of date palm in the household (HH) income of rural communities and the structure of date value chains, this project studied date palm production across six districts in four provinces of Pakistan. During 2012–2013 a total of 170 HHs were interviewed with a structured questionnaire using a snowball sampling approach. The results showed that most of the HH were headed by males (99 %) who were married (74 %) and often illiterate (40 %). Agriculture was the main occupation of date palm growers (56 %), while a few coupled agricultural activities with business (17 %) or extra-farm employment opportunities (government 9 %; private sector 8 %). Date sales contributed >50 % to the total income of 39 % of HH and 90–100 % to 24 % of HH. Overall farmers grew a total of 39 date palm cultivars and cultivated an average of 409 ± 559 mature date palms. The majority of the respondents sold dates to commission agents (35 %), contractors (22 %) and wholesalers (21 %), while 28 % of HH cultivated date palms only for self-consumption. Date palm growers had only limited knowledge about high quality date cultivars, optimized farm management and about effective post-harvest conservation. Changes in extension and marketing efforts are needed to allow farmers to better exploit value chains in date thereby reaping higher benefits from improved market access to secure their often marginal income. Springer International Publishing 2016-08-02 /pmc/articles/PMC4970996/ /pubmed/27536506 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s40064-016-2855-4 Text en © The Author(s) 2016 Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.
spellingShingle Research
Fatima, Ghayoor
Khan, Iqrar Ahmad
Buerkert, Andreas
Socio-economic characterisation of date palm (Phoenix dactylifera L.) growers and date value chains in Pakistan
title Socio-economic characterisation of date palm (Phoenix dactylifera L.) growers and date value chains in Pakistan
title_full Socio-economic characterisation of date palm (Phoenix dactylifera L.) growers and date value chains in Pakistan
title_fullStr Socio-economic characterisation of date palm (Phoenix dactylifera L.) growers and date value chains in Pakistan
title_full_unstemmed Socio-economic characterisation of date palm (Phoenix dactylifera L.) growers and date value chains in Pakistan
title_short Socio-economic characterisation of date palm (Phoenix dactylifera L.) growers and date value chains in Pakistan
title_sort socio-economic characterisation of date palm (phoenix dactylifera l.) growers and date value chains in pakistan
topic Research
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4970996/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27536506
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s40064-016-2855-4
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