Tropical Wholefoods Director Richard Friend's second blog from Afghanistan where he has been visiting our Fairtrade Raisin partners, Parwan Raisin Producer Cooperative.

Richard with PRPC members

 Am slightly put out when I wake at 3.15 am. Also its a Shia festival today so the Muezzin are up early and start the call to prayer at 3.30 accompanied by supportive car horns. Not helpful, the cake and pepsi option for the farmer meeting means a 6am start, I close the windows and turn on the rattily fan. Seems to do the trick and its time to get up in no time.    

Chirpy and refreshed we miss the worst traffic and make the journey north to Charicar in an hour and a half. We meet at one of the cooperative collection centres, and greet every one. Every new comer greets everyone with a hand shake or touch of the wrist or side to side hug or cheek to cheek touch, depending on status, kinship, friendship or combination thereof. Aman and I are given the place of honour furthest from the door. Eventually we start although each late comer still greets everyone. Its a lively and good humoured meeting except when due to a mistranslation the coop chairman thinks I want to take over his position rather than just chairing the meeting and makes a rather impassioned speech in response.  Everyone puts away their guns and laughs (of course there were no guns, just pandering to your stereotype dear reader).  After an hour and a half of my talking and Aman translating on the forthcoming FLO audit everyone is well ready for a cake and pepsi  break. Good call Aman! Its a very generous portion of very dry madeira cake so I mostly stick to the pepsi, blaming the large breakfast I didn't have.

Richard addressing PRPC meeting

The Panshir restaurant is bedecked with pictures of the Lion of Panshir, Amad Shar Masood the Mujahedeen commander and national hero assassinated by Al-Qaeda suicide bombers on 09/09/2001(two days before the twin towers attack). Its cheap, clean and very busy. The restaurant is presided by a captivating, booming voiced master of ceremonies.  He seats customers and takes and shouts their orders to the kitchen. Although he takes no notes when the customers leave, he shouts what they have eaten to the blue eyed owner at the till by the door. Great performance.  We have a good meeting discussing volumes and terms for and distribution of the fairtrade pre-payments with the coop board over kebabs, Kabuli rice and pepsi. I stick to the rice and pepsi. 

The road to Kabul is just wide enough and in good enough condition to get some real speed up before attempting an overtaking feat of eye popping fearlessness. Unfortunately I fell asleep and missed most of the fun. However back in KabuI I was moved when an individual, who faced with the tiresome prospect of circumnavigating a large roundabout, drove against the direction of travel, crossed two traffic streams and forced himself into his desired lane. Sadly the road condition was too poor to attempt this at speed so no gold medal for our driver but still highly commended. I managed a horse bravo but in hindsight it warranted at least polite applause.

Fairtrade raisins are in
Oxfam shops, www.tropicalwholefoods.com
and health food shops.

Back to the guest house and invited the two resident MC staff to share my tomato and aubergine yum. Always a good story to be had from these folk, however Mikes are in the champions league. He has spent much of the last six years living and working with nomadic tribesmen in 30 provinces of Afghanistan (also Sudan and Kenya). No not the sort of job you see many adverts for. He runs a successful conflict management program solving problems between settled and nomadic peoples all over Afghanistan. There are plenty of these because of increasing settlement on traditional range land. The Afghan climate produces a low animal carrying capacity on permanently settled land so nomad animal stock accounts for nearly 70% in Afghanistan and nearly all of the breeding stock. The Kuchi nomads are therefore important to the country but unpopular with settled people (like travellers everywhere).

Tropical Wholefoods in Afghanistan
Technical Director Richard Friend's been in Afghanistan working with our partner Parwan Raisin Producer Cooperative (PRPC) helping them to prepare for their first Fairtrade inspection. This week, we have heard that the inspection was successful and that Parwan are now Fairtrade certifed raisin producers. Hurrah! Here are a few of Richard's blogs sent from Afghanistan. 07.40 arrival in Kabul Airport. I fill out the foreigner registration form, recruiting the very bored official to help select two pictures from my collection seems to do the trick, he is slightly amused and doesn't bother me about my tourist visa and uncomplainingly uses my sleep deprived spider scrawl to glean all the information he needs to fill out a card in a similarly illegible scrawl to my own, to which he attaches and stamps my picture. This is very good as failure to gain - albeit a completely illegible - foreigner identification card can lead to i) The need to visit the appropriate ministry for a half day queue / scrum. ii) Hassle if you get stopped without one (theoretically likely as passport checks for foreigners are very common although nobody asks for the card.) iii) The need to pay a fine when trying to leave. Several techy ex-pats don't want to fill in the form "can we get one from somewhere else" "from the ministry". "where is the ministry" "in the city" accompanied with a low energy gesture in the presumed direction of Kabul.
Once outside, my small pleasure of getting a trolley to the side where you can push into the queue for the bag receipt checkers is dissipated as can't find Aman (our man in Kabul). I call Aman wait for 30 minutes in the sun, call again, drink two cans of lemonade before wandering off in the direction of car park C. No need! Here he is sitting down in the shade of the waiting area 30 metres from where I was standing. From here onto a Mercy Corps guest house called Montana Base. I have been here before. It's a three storey shared self-catering accommodation for ex-pat staff members, much less lonely than a hotel which makes it much more comfortable. Sleep.
13.00 Kabul. Time to start work at Mercy Corps office "Kilo base". Preparation for the Raisin Producer Cooperative General Assembly where I am to speak tomorrow. We meet the MC security head to get permission to go to Charicar since there are security restrictions in Kabul due to an international conference. It's ok. Aman is wants to discuss the catering arrangements at length. We agree on cake and Pepsi for the farmers' meeting and lunch in Charicar with the coop board. To pull off the cheaper cake and pepsi option we need to get finished by 12 or meat and rice will be required! Hopefully we can do the board meeting over lunch so we can get back before the international conference stops the traffic. Back to Montana Base via Finest Supermarket. Finest has quite robust anti ram raid / suicide bomb defences and you get frisked on the way in but in other respects it's like a very expensive down market Sainsbury's. Write up my stuff, cook some tea and it's time for bed.

Newsletter Feb 2011

Raisin Awareness! Fairtrade from Afghanistan

Juicy, sweet, Fairtrade raisin's .....from Afghanistan. These are the first of what we hope will be many Fairtrade products to come out of Afghanistan! The grapes are grown and sun dried by the Parwan Raisin Producer Cooperative on the Shomali Plain, with whom Tropical Wholefoods and international NGO Mercy Corps have been working closely for the last three years. Known as “the Garden of Kabul” the Shomali Plain is famous for producing grapes, but the area also saw heavy fighting during the Soviet era, Civil War and Taliban regime. The low lying grape vines provided perfect cover for fighters and therefore many of them were destroyed. Fairtrade export of the raisins brings hope to the farmers most of whom say that what they want for the future is simply "Peace and Education." Buying Fairtrade Raisins is a way of delivering that to them. The raisins are available in 250g and 50g packs from our website, www. tropicalwholefoods.com Oxfam shops and health food shops nationwide. Whilst we love to snack on raisins, they are also a great ingredient.For some lovely recipes, go to: www.fmfoods.co.uk/resources/recipes.htm TW founder, Kate's favourite raisin recipes are: Spicy Beef Stew with Raisins, Lamb Pilau with Raisins,and Chutney Gashneez. The family are patiently waiting for her raisin recipe craze to die down...last year it was apricot kernels....

Recipe: Afghan Chutni Gashneez

From Helen Saberi’s Afghan Food & Cookery. This fresh relish is great served with pilaus, kebabs and samosa . Keeps well in the fridge. Enough for 8 people. 225g fresh coriander (not the lower stems or roots) 10 to 25g hot green chillies, seeds removed and chopped 10 to 25g garlic, peeled and chopped 50g Tropical Wholefoods Fairtrade walnuts 25g sugar 225ml lemon juice or white wine vinegar 2 tsp salt 30g Tropical Wholefoods Fairtrade raisins Blend coriander, green chillies, garlic and walnuts in blender making sure they are well mixed. Add the sugar to the lemon juice or vinegar and again mix well. Add this to the coriander mixture with the salt and raisins, mix, put into clean jars, and refrigerate ‘til using.

Comic Relief Funds Biogas in Burkina Faso Dried Mango Cooperatives

We all love dried mango! But when you produce hundreds of tonnes like our Coops do in Burkina Faso, you need a lot of heat for your ovens, and you generate alot of waste peels, stones and any bruised flesh. Currently this waste is composted in the fields, but wouldn’t it be great if it could be converted into fuel to heat, yes you've guessed it, the ovens to dry the mango. Comic Relief have funded a 3 year Research and Development project with us to develop Biogas production out of the mango waste, combining it with human and animal waste. We are working with a team of biogas experts on this exciting project. In 2010, we funded Devkota Govinda from Nepal, a former Ashden Sustainable Energy Gold Award winner to visit Burkina, build a biogas unit and carry out training with local artisans. The unit is being tested in preparation for the 2011 mango season which starts in May. In the UK, Engineering firm Max Applicances have produced prototype mango waste chopping machines to speed up the composting process; and David Fulford from Kingdom Biogas is researching maximising output from the biogas units. Finally, Devtech at Imperial College are working on mechanisms to improve the efficiency of the drying ovens.www.imperialconsultants.co.uk/showcases/efficientmangodrying Interested? Call Kate 0845 258 2781

DFID Back Berry Growing in Uganda

We are at the end of the first year of a two and a half year funded Department for International Development (DFID) programme to develop berry growing and drying in Uganda with our partners Fruits of the Nile from whom we already buy sun dried pineapple and banana. The Cape Gooseberries have grown very well, and we will be showing these, sun dried, at Biofach Organic Trade Fair in Nuremberg, Germany in February 2011 where we are exhibiting in the Africa Pavillion. Cape Gooseberries (also known as Physalis) are small tart berries, rich in potassium, vitamin A and C. The Strawberry plants are also doing well, although the fruits are vulnerable to insect and pest damage. Raspberry canes and blueberry bushes have established well but will be slower to fruit. Tim Sobey from TSA Consultants and Julia Wright from Garden Organic collaborated with our farmers in Uganda to establish the new berry gardens. See farmer Kellen Kaboine in her strawberry and cape gooseberry plot in our new video on Uganda. Visit: www.youtube.com/user/tropicalwholefoods

Mountain Fruits looking for a better 2011

2010 was a very difficult year for Mountain Fruits and their farmers. A landslide in Jan uary buried the village of Attabad where many of our apricot farmers lived. In July, the rising levels of the lake resulted in 90% of another apricot producing village, Shishket being submerged. Many other villages suffered terrible flooding. Thousands of people are still displaced and living in temporary camps. We sincerely thank all supporters who donated money to the relief effort. The producers have voted to invest the donated money in creating new irrigation channels, and if possible building a new school. Understandably they only wish to do this once they have been relocated to their new land. The government is not being very quick about this but they live in hope. Meanwhile, Mountain Fruits have managed, despite the difficulties, to continue work on their new nut processing factory at Damas, near Gakuch. Grant money from Sainsburys Fair Development Fund is helping fund the development of the new nut factory. Mountain Fruits will be able to process Fairtrade almonds & walnuts here for use in Ben and Jerry's icecream, as well as pressing them into oils for use in Boots, Neals Yard, and Lush cosmetics range. Boots Extracts range is also using the walnut and apricot kernel shells as exfoliant ingredients. Go to: www.youtube.com/user/TropicalWholefoods to see our Pakistan video.

Fairtrade Labelling Organisation in Uganda

Fruits of the Nile Growers Association (FONA) which represents all the growers and dryers of our pineapple and bananas, had their first full FLO inspection in September 2010. Whilst some issues came up to do with organisational structures and record keeping which FONA have now addressed. FONA were seen not to have done too badly at all for a first inspection. We have not heard yet, but we are cautiously optimistic that FONA will succeed in getting FLO certification for their products in early 2011. This will mean that at last we will have both Organic and FLO Fairtrade certification for our Sun Dried Pineapples, Chewy Banana Chips and Bogoya Banana. After twenty years of trading with Fruits of the Nile, these will be nice certificates to have!

Fairtrade Fortnight Fruit Hats, Rumer & Hugh FW

Hats off to Rumer

Fantastic singer Rumer is offering a pair of free tickets to her concert at the Royal Festival Hall on March 28th to the winner of a Fairtrade Fortnight Facebook competition backed by Tropical Wholefoods. All you have to do is create a fruity head dress for yourself with a hat, turban or cap. Use fresh or dried fruits but be sure that they are Fairtrade! Be inspired by Kate here in a lovely Easter Bonnet made up of dried fruits! Take a picture of yourself in your hatted finery and post it up on the Fairtrade Foundation’s Facebook challenge which will be open from March 4th. www.facebook.com/FairtradeFoundation The person whose head gear gets the most “likes” wins the 2 tickets AND signed vinyl and a CD from Rumer, and a TW basket full of dried fruit & nuts.

Raisin Awareness Sample Boxes

Tropical Wholefoods are “Showing Off” for Fortnight with a Raisin Awareness campaign box to let people know how proud we are to be selling Fairtrade Raisins from Afghanistan. Campaigners and Retailers will receive Raisin Awareness stickers, x3 250g bags of Fairtrade Afghan Raisins, a taster tub of Fairtrade mango, Raisin Awareness Recipes, a DVD containing 4 short videos on our partners, postcards, posters, plus packs of roast Apricot Kernels, Bogoya Banana, and snack bars. To help us with costs, it would be great if if you could send us a cheque for £5, made out to Fullwell Mill and posted to: Rachel Gurak, Fullwell Mill, Unit 5d, Southwick Industrial Estate, Sunderland SR5 3TX. Please ask for TWRaisinAwarenes Box and enclose your address for sending the box to and any special delivery instructions.

In The Papers

We have just heard that Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall is doing a Fairtrade feature in The Guardian Weekend on February 26th on Cooking with Fairtrade Dried Fruits. Hurrah! In 2010 it was also exciting to get written about in, amongst others: The New York Times, The Times, Financial Mail, Observer Food Monthly, The Guardian, Ethical Consumer, The Big Issue and Green Futures. www.fmfoods.co.uk/news/news.htm

4 New Videos on YouTube

For a preview of our great new videos on Pakistan, Uganda, Burkina Faso and Afghanistan go to: www.youtube.com/user/tropicalwholefoods Richard Wilson from one31studio.com has edited these using footage shot by Adam and Kate whilst working with our partners.

Working With Charities

During 2010, we were lucky to work with: Found a Pound in Liverpool www.foundapound.com The Women's Institute Anti Poverty Day in Cheshire The Fairtrade Towns Network over summer sampling events and Fairtrade Fortnight and last but not least, Oxfam who are sampling our Fairtrade Afghan raisins to customers in January and February. We're also contributing a recipe to Oxfam's recipe booklet available in store from end of February for Fairtrade Fortnight and beyond.

If you would like to find out more about our work: Call: Kate Sebag 0845 258 2781 or 07834 343664 or Rachel Gurak 0845 258 2783 Or email: kate@tropicalwholefoods.com, Rachel@tropicalwholefoods.com Our address is: Tropical Wholefoods , Fullwell Mill, Unit 5d, Southwick Industrial Estate, Sunderland SR5 3TX tel: 0845 258 2781.

News Clips...

Organic Ugandan Pineapples and Bananas

After a long process, our partner Fruits of the Nile in Uganda has finally achieved Organic Certification. It has been a huge achievement involving the registration and training of more than 700 very dispersed farmers. Until we get Fairtrade certification for these three products we have decided not to change our existing retail packaging to show that the fruits are Organic. This way we save costs on plate changes and film wastage. Fruits of the Nile Growers Association's first full Fairtrade inspection is expected by middle of 2010, if not sooner.

Comic Relief in Burkina Faso

We are just starting a 3 year project at the Mango Drying Cooperatives we work with in Burkina Faso. The project is funded by Comic Relief to develop Biogas production out of Mango waste generated by the drying process. The biogas will be made from combining mango peel, stones and rejects with human and animal waste. The biogas will then be used as fuel to heat the ovens which dry the sliced mango. We are working with a team of UK biogas experts on this project.

Kernels win Gold Prize

We are very pleased that Tropical Wholefoods Fairtrade Apricot Kernels were the winner of the Green Familia Gold Leaf TGF Rated Awards for Food and Drink for 2009. This is a reader voted award. Results were announced on December 31st so a great end to 2009 for the kernels. The tamari and chilli kernels are proving extremely popular – and now are available in sharing/catering tubs 500g from our website shop.

Trade Shows 2010

We will be exhibiting along with our Ugandan partner Fruits of the Nile in the Uganda section of the African Pavilion at Biofach, Nurnberg, Germany this year. Feb 18th to Feb 21st. The African Pavilion is in Hall 4.

We are on stand 6110 at Organic and Natural Products April 11th and 12th.

British Retail Consortium (BRC)

For the 4th year running, we have been certified to Global Standard at Grade A when our Fullwell Mill bakery and packing factory was inspected by BRC. This is a testament to the fantastic work our quality and production team continue to do. Well done all!

Dried Berries from Uganda

We have got funding from the Department for International Development to develop berry growing and drying in Uganda with our partner Fruits of the Nile. The berries are Physalis (Cape Gooseberry), Strawberries and Blueberries. We are working with the Henry Doubleday Foundation on this 2 year programme. We will show the first dried berries at Biofach this year at Fruits of the Nile's stand in the African Pavillion

Landslide in Pakistan

At the beginning of January, we were very sad to hear from our partner in Pakistan, Mountain Fruits, that many of their farmers had experienced devastating landslides in Atta-Abad in the Hunza region. More than 1600 people have been evacuated already and are sheltering in schools, with neighbours or in tents in very cold conditions. More than 100 houses have collapsed or are in damaged conditions, and more than 10,000 people are under serious threat of being evacuated due to the risk of the river Hunza rising because of all the debris that has fallen into it from the landslides. We have been raising money from friends and colleagues to send out to Mountain Fruits for reconstruction. We thank those who have donated for their generosity. Anyone else who wishes to donate can send their donation to Shared Interest who have kindly agreed to send out money to Pakistan free of charge. Please send as below:

DIRECT BANK TRANSFERS:
should go to:
Account Name: Shared Interest Foundation
Account Number: 70749045
Sort Code: 089006
Please quote: Livelihood Security Pakistan

Please also send andrea.wilkinson@shared-interest.com a short email saying that you are making a donation for Pakistan Landslide Relief.

CHEQUES:
If you wish to send a cheque please make it out to the: Shared Interest Foundation. Please post it to Andrea Wilkinson, Shared Interest Foundation, No 2 Cathedral Square, The Groat Market, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 1EH Please include a note quoting:
Livelihood Security Pakistan

GIFT AID:
If you are a UK tax payer, Shared Interest are able to reclaim tax on your donation at a rate of 28% and so increase your donation to Pakistan by 28%, so please contact Louise 0191 233 9112 or louise.mclaren@shared-interest.com and she can send you the appropriate form to fill in and include with your donation to enable the tax reclaim to go ahead.

Afghan Raisins

We are importing raisins this Spring again from the Shomali Plains just north of Kabul. Adam Brett and Richard Friend have been working with US Non Governmental Organisation (NGO) Mercy Corps since 2006 on developing a good raisin supply out of Afghanistan into the UK. Part of the brief is to improve the farmer drying of raisins (through introduction of a mat based system). The washing and further grading and de-stalking of the raisins is another stage. Getting Fairtrade Certification for the grape farmers is another goal. It's been a tricky one to manage because the insecurity in the region rules out any FLO inspectors going to Afghanistan. However, Adam has been working closely with the Fairtrade Foundation and Mercy Corps to try to develop a way in which FLO certification can be available to farmers groups in fragile and precarious states like Afghanistan and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Considerable progress has been made.

The raisins are delicious and sweet, and will be available as bulk and in Tropical Wholefoods retail packs of 200g x 6.