Contributions of post-harvesting technologies in alleviating poverty: A case study of date palm cluster in Khairpur district, Sindh, Pakistan

Pakistan recently released its first multi-dimensional poverty report in 2016, which underlined the fact that a country with almost 200 million in total population has a 39% rate for poverty, precisely estimating it to detail that around 78 million people are still living below the national poverty line. The poverty has distressed around 55% of the population residing in rural parts of the country. However, it is the rural part that has been contributing a lot in agriculture and possess a high potential for future to help Pakistan, not only to gain a competitive edge in developing a sustainable agriculture, but also alleviating poverty by employing much population of its rural parts and by also providing them with worthful opportunities for their production. Indeed, Pakistan is an Agriculture based economy, and around 44% of the population is directly employed in Agriculture contributing 24% in making up total GDP of Pakistan. District Khairpur in rural Sindh province of Pakistan, has a 27% population living under poverty line but the district also is home to a huge date palm industry. Pakistan the 5th largest producer of Date Palm with above 650 metric tonnes of annual production output and making up to an estimated 9.6% of total date palm production globally. However, the purchasing rates are 565 US Dollars/Tonne, discounting as low as approximately 4.5 times lesser than the highest in the global market. The reasons are manifold, ranging from unawareness on increasing yield output of date palms, in-appropriate post-harvest management, lack of food quality, safety measures and underestimating the probable worth of production by date palm producers. Surely, technologies can help reconciles the necessity for sustainable and profitable food production. Moreover, employing Post-harvest technologies can play the vital role in boosting date palm productivity, therefore, reducing the post-harvest loss augmenting to contribute a sustainable agriculture. It can be done in ways that are social, economically and environmentally sustainable. This paper proposes a study on post-harvesting technology, i.e. Solar-Cum-Gas fired date dehydrators deployed as a testbed project in district Khairpur, Sindh of Pakistan. A comparative analysis of traditional methods and new innovative post-harvesting approach are discussed to conclude social implications of date palm producing farmers and significance of attaining a competitive edge by increasing exports in international markets. Additionally, this paper also proposes recommendations on the need for greater follow-up in tracking the adoption of technologies for sustainable farming systems, poverty reduction through the introduction of sustainable post-harvest technologies and value addition methods to obtain its real perspective worth from produced date palm outputs. Possible opportunities and potential advancements are suggested as a future work to be progressed.