Baloch women in Pakistan learn to grow and preserve their own produce

I started a vegetable garden for the first time because now I know how.

-- Bakhtawar, a grandmother from Loralai District, Balochistan, Pakistan, shows off her vegetable seedlings

Bakhtawar, a grandmother who lives with 30 family members in Murtad Kilan village in Pakistan's vast Balochistan prov-ince, recently planted her very first vegetable garden on a plot of land connected to her family home. She planted tomatoes, eggplant, bitter gourd and okra, summer vegetables used in daily cooking but usually only available at markets. More than 500 women across three provincial districts have learned to maintain kitchen gardens and to preserve and process their yield through a USAID-funded program with the Food and Ag-riculture Organization of the United Nations.

In Loralai District, Bakhtawar and 279 others learned to grow vegetables and preserve food from five local women who attended a two-week master training course at an agricultural university in Faisalabad, Punjab. Communities selected their trainers from among women who were literate and experi-enced in conducting local health or vocational workshops. It was a breakthrough for women from this socially conservative province to travel from their villages to a different province, said Asima Basit, an FAO community organizer.

Upon returning to Balochistan, the trainers conducted five-day workshops on planting seeds, using fertilizer, controlling plant disease, and improving seasonal home cultivation, and a separate week-long workshop on canning and making pastes, pickles, jams and jellies for home use and the market. "We used to buy pickles and jams from the bazaar in Quetta and now we can save money by making them ourselves," said Rubina Kausar, a Mastung District resident. These skills also keep excess seasonal produce from going to waste. At least two women's groups have established links with retailers in the provincial capital, Quetta, to market their output.

"I started a vegetable garden for the first time because now I know how," Bakhtawar said. "Now we can do it better than the men." While their men usually cultivate commercial crops, Loralai's women now grow seasonal produce year round to diversify their families' diets, save money otherwise spent at the bazaar, and market their own food products for added income. Bakhtawar's large family spends at least 50 rupees daily on vegetables for cooking. Her growing kitchen garden and new food processing skills will soon help defray that cost.