Olive tree plantation yet to get KP govt’s attention

PESHAWAR: Growing or grafting olive plants in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, especially in Malakand Division, is yet to get the government attention despite the fact the area is already rich in species and has great potential for growing the plants for oil production.

About a decade ago, the initiative of grafting wild olive trees was taken from Malakand top where hundreds of old trees were grafted with oil producing species that proved successful. Following this initiative, local youth from Talash area of Lower Dir district, while learning grafting technique from an Italian national, started grafting wild olive. They have so far grafted about 114,000 trees in the valley wherein 22,000 of them have started production.

According to an expert from Karachi, Dr Fayaz Alam, general secretary, Dua Foundation, one tree produces from 10 to 150 kilograms of fruit. If promoted, the government can save billions of rupees being spent on cooking oil import as the country is receiving from abroad 84 percent of total consumption of this oil. He says the minimum price of the olive fruit is Rs 300 per kg and a grower having 500 trees can earn at least 1.5 million rupees a year.

According to him, only the mountains of the Talash Valley has hundreds of thousands of wild olive trees. Almost all districts of the Malakand Division have a large number of wild olive trees which, if grafted on the commercial level, can bring about economic revolution besides earning billions of rupees annually for the country.

But unfortunately, the government forest or agriculture departments are yet to take serious steps for growing and grafting of olive plants. Even in the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) flagship Billion Trees Tsunami Project attention was not given to the olive trees plantation.