Date palm is the sole and wide spread agriculture activity on Socotra, Yemen. It has been responsible for the survival of man and animals during centuries of human settlement on the island. The estimated number of trees is 1.5 million producing dates almost annually, facing difficulties in husbandary (due to difficulty of pollinating trees) and post harvest crop management. Dates crop is harvested, processed and stored in meadeaval techniques. This includes ground sun drying, removal of seeds, packing in Goats' skin. The process yield dirty, non marketable product, high percentage of spoiled dates caused by insects and finally an economic loss to growers.
The Socotri Women Development Society based on Socotra in consultation with some of the growers is proposing to seek improving the culture techniques for greater harvest and proper packing of harvested crops that is hygienic and acceptable end product for marketing. The lack the technical capacity to do the feasibility study in order to prepare the required proposal with design consideration for a processing plant that can carry out post harvest dates processing and packing.
The grant would be use to hire a consultant to undertake consultation workshop with growers in order to build up consensus among growers, design the collection system, inlist required equipments and tools, prepare the required proposal for submission to the NSC of the SGP Yemen for funding. The importance of this achieved is to enable dates palm growers to sell extra crop for cash, properly store their need and reduce losses.
Hadibo Location is: Latitude +1400323 Longtitude +827540