KOHAT: Guava orchards are being ruthlessly cut to make way for constructing markets and commercial centres amid the booming real estate business.

Talking to Dawn on Saturday, deputy director agriculture department Zahirullah Khattak said that the orchards land had shrunk drastically from 3,100 acres to 2,300 acres in the past few years.

The land, where once guava orchards stood, is being converted into housing schemes, commercial plazas and markets for making huge profits. He said this was because per marla was fetching Rs600,000. He feared guava orchards would vanish altogether in near future.

Mr Khattak said mushrooming growth of commercial buildings was causing environmental degradation in the city and its outskirts besides causing scarcity of the fruit.

“The poor growers cannot afford buying the expensive machinery without the financial assistance of the government for extracting the juice and making jams and jellies,” Mehfooz Elahi, another agriculture department official, said. He added that Pakistan imported guava juices from abroad, especially from Malaysia, by spending millions of rupees, whereas it could easily be manufactured within the country.

“The environment of Kohat is conducive for growing guava, but if the cutting of trees goes on unabated the guava farms would vanish altogether,” he said.

The agricultural expert said the local growers had turned to alternative cultivation, mainly of oranges, on a large-scale, which had resulted in comparatively good returns for them, but in the process, Kohat was losing its identity as the best guava-producing district of the country. However, it is heartening to note that guava farms in Mohammadzai and famous Kaghazai area on Hangu Road were still intact because commercialisation was yet to sneak into these areas, he said.

Published in Dawn, March 13th, 2022