Sun dryer, Guarantees Economic Growth of Needy Families

Dehqan Weekly / Siddiq Khalid
CPMO Communications Officer
Del Jan who is 50 years old and an agricultural woman in the center of Bamyan province.  She has been the only one taking care of 8 family members. She had been struggling with many intensities trying to feed her family.
Del Jan has been growing tomatoes and other vegetables on her small farm for years, yet   she didn't have standard vegetable and fruit dryer, she could not maintain her farm’s products, and couldn't make money to her family properly.
Del Jan and some other farmers of her village are obliged to sell all their crops at low prices each year in the same harvest season due to lack of facilities, but this year she was assisted with a sun_ drying base by (HVCDSP) which is one of the projects of MAIL, to make crops using this dryer and sell them at a reasonable price in the following seasons.
Now, she doesn't only dry her own crops using a sun-dryer, but also buys products of other farmers and then get them dried.
By doing so, Del Jan has paved the way for a small business, which has provided a prosperous life for her family.
She taking about this dryer said,  "We have been suffering from a lack of a standard sun dryer for years, that's why a large amount of our crops were being wasted every year due to the lack of a standard sun dryer."  We also used regular sunlight every year to dry crops, which was not a standard method at all.
Every year, I paved the crops on the roofs, which mixed the soil and other harmful substances. But with the acquisition of this machine, all our problems in field of drying crops were solved. Adding that "This year, in addition to my farm products I bought agricultural products from other farmers and dried them using this machine."
"Since the day I got the sun dryer, our lives have been improved economically, as I bought rum, green peppers, apricots, and a variety of fresh vegetables and fruits, and then use the sun dryer to dry these products. She further said, "I sell in local markets of Bamyan at a reasonable price, which also earns me a considerable income."
Peasants in different parts of the country routinely use non-standard methods to dry crops, which is not reliable in terms of health and causes health issues.
But it should be noted that solar dryers, which are distributed to women farmers by horticultural value chain development sector project in eight provinces of the country, are standard and dry agricultural products in accordance with all health regulations and farmers offer them to domestic markets. These solar dryers have the capacity to dry 50 to 70 kg of agricultural products at a time and dry this amount of products in three to five days.  In general, distributed dryers, on the one hand, help reduce unemployment and, on the other hand, prevent the loss of crops as much as possible.
It should be noted that the horticultural value chain development sector project is funded by Asian Development Bank (ADB).