YAP proposal #396: Gender Empowerment Through Household Farm Products (Muhammad Issa Khan, Pakistan)

Hi, I am Dr Muhammad Issa Khan, 37, working as Assistant Professor at the National Institute of Food Science and Technology, University of Agriculture, Faisalabad, Pakistan.

Pakistan has an agriculture-based economy and produced variety of fruits in all provinces of the country.

High quality of apricot, plum and apple are produced in Gilgit-Baltistan region of the country and a large amount of these prime fruits are wasted due to insufficient technology and training to converted them into valuable commodities.

As a whole post-harvest losses of fruits and vegetables are about 40–50% on average but these losses will be quite higher in this region.

Pakistan is trying to industrialize itself as rapidly as possible as industrialization is most commonly discussed problem in Pakistan today.

It is a well-known fact that cottage industries can play a significant role in the development of an economy like Pakistan, as it is observed that this industry do not required too much financing, imported and highly sophisticated technology.

So the problems like deficit in public finance and balance of payments is not related with the growth and development of these industries. Simultaneously, high degree of female/disabled labour force participation in this sector has also been proved in the number of studies.

This seems to be helpful in the process of reduction of poverty especially in the rural areas. Earlier, training was provided to disabled and polio-affected people was provided in the province of the Baluchistan, Pakistan

Women are integral part of the society and their population in country is more than 50% so their training for production of value added products would enhance their family income and can also contribute in boosting country economy and reduce these post-harvest losses of the prime fruits.

In this project women will be trained to utilize local resources for the production of value added fruits product to curtail postharvest losses and improve their family income. For the purpose women will train in the area of fruits and vegetable preservation and products development in the area of Gilgit-Baltistan to prevent losses of prime crops.

Budget:                                                                                              USD 5,000

Purchase of training material:                                                              USD 2,000

Provision of material to participants:                                                 USD 1,000

Printing of informational material:                                                      USD 1,000

Training oftTrainers (educated):                                                         USD 500

Training of housewives                                                                       USD 500

 

Blogpost and picture submitted by Muhammad Issa Khan (Pakistan): drkhan[at]uaf.edu.pk

The content, structure and grammar are at the discretion of the author only.

 

This post is published as proposal #396 of “YAP” – our “Youth Agripreneur Project”.

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