Afghanistan markets its pomegranates

Opium trade-offs
Even Wednesday's launch event — with pomegranate juice stations, color banners proclaiming the arrival of Anar, international speakers and a dinner finishing with pomegranate ice cream — required security on the level of a military base. Bomb-sniffing dogs inspected cars and guests were frisked.

And pomegranate crops are much riskier for farmers than poppy, which is supported by a sophisticated system put in place by drug traffickers.

"The benefits of poppy go beyond just what the farmer can get when he sells it at the farm gate," said Joel Hafvenstein, author of "Opium Season," a book about working on a poppy alternative crop project in southern Afghanistan. "Traffickers provide advance payments, credit, contract farming arrangements, technical advice, a whole package of benefits that don't come with any other crop in Afghanistan."

Still, the pomegranate experts are optimistic.

William Phillimore, executive vice president of Paramount Farming Co., whose Pom Wonderful helped sparked the jump in U.S. demand, called Afghan pomegranates "as good as anything I've tasted." He was in Kabul for the launch.

Going commercial
U.S. pest control regulations mean that Afghan pomegranates won't be showing up in New York or California anytime soon, but even if they did, Phillimore said he believes the market would be big enough to accommodate more of the fruit, which his company grows in California.

If the pomegranate marketing succeeds, it could end up boosting the brand name of Afghanistan itself.

"Afghanistan has a mixed-brand heritage," Stoddard said, noting that while the country currently invokes thoughts of war and extremism, it's still exotic to the Western mind.

Among Afghanistan's 48 different types of pomegranates, there is one that has survived all the years of Afghanistan's negative press. The Kandari pomegranate, named after the southern Afghan province where it's grown, is one of the most sought-after in India.

Stoddard said those shipped to India will be labeled the "Kandari Pomegranate" because of the popularity of the brand.

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