PESHAWAR: Yasir Mehmood has been keeping honeybees since he was a young boy. When he turned 18, he decided to turn his hobby into a business.
He started out by setting up fifty beehive boxes in his hometown of Nowshehra, a city in Pakistan’s northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. Now, two decades later, he has over 600 hives.
Though business has boomed in past years, Mehmood says it has slowed down recently for a variety of reasons, not least climate change and deforestation.
Around the world, global warming is changing the environmental cues that bees rely on to carry out the work of pollination. Spring now arrives earlier in many parts of the world and not all species are adjusting to this warming at the same rate, and some, like bees, are falling out of step.
“Our business has suffered due to climate change which has led to various diseases in bees,” Mehmood told Arab News. “The mortality rates of bees have become very high and that is affecting every aspect of our lives.”
Mehmood said sudden changes in weather and unseasonal rains had hampered his business and he was forced to relocate the bee boxes to an environment that better-suited honey production, thus raking up production costs. This year, he invested Rs.2 million in his business but earned only Rs.1.5 million.
Mehmood has tried to take various measures to improve his production. He has moved many of his boxes to Faisalabad to give the bees a more hospitable environment. Indeed, in the winter months that bring with them many new diseases that bees are susceptible to, Mehmood struggles to move his hives to the Punjab province. In summer, he tries to relocate them to places like Swat, Kalam, Chitral and Shandoor. He has also tried to place his beehives in fields of Arugula to help the bees survive the harsh cold and feed their offspring. Finally, he says, he has invested in modern medicine to heal bees hit by cold-related illnesses. But things have still remained tough.
“Previously we were generating honey for six seasons. Now it’s been limited to only two seasons,” said Noor Hasan, 55, who has worked as a bee specialist at the Tarnab Agriculture Research Institute since 1982.
Tarnab Farm in Peshawar, the capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, is home to Pakistan’s biggest honey market, which exports about 4,000 tons of the commodity, worth nearly Rs 2.8 billion, to Arab countries every year. Berry and Acacia, commonly known as Palosa, are the most popular types of honey available in the market and commonly used by diabetics.
Pakistan used to export around Rs.15 billion worth of honey until 2004, which had sharply reduced to Rs.3 billion currently, according to Gul Badshah, senior vice president of the Bee Keepers, Exporters and Traders Honey Association.
At the moment Pakistan is only exporting honey to Gulf countries; European markets will remain at bay until Pakistan starts following international standards in honey production, Dr. Hussain Ali, a senior research scientist at Tarnab Farm, said: “And that can be achieved once we train our beekeepers and take precautionary measures to produce quality honey.”
Ali said Tarnab Farm was conducting research on the behavior, physiology and diseases of bees and how climate change was affecting them. He said deforestation was one of the major causes of reduction of honey in the country.
“That’s why we have lost some flavor of honey recently. Today we are seeing shortage of wild trees due to spraying on the fields, cutting of trees and urbanization. That’s why the business isn’t progressing,” Ali said.
Honey business owners are optimistic that the government’s Billion Tree Tsunami scheme might help. The reforestation project has added 350,000 hectares of trees both by planting and natural regeneration, in an effort to fight the effects of climate change.
“Apart from the environment, this [reforestation] would be beneficial for the honey production where bees would work in modest temperature and be able to roam around more and more trees,” Mehmood said, adding that another step the government could take to help the honey business was training farmers about climate change and viral diseases prone to bees.
Faced with climate change, Pakistani honey producers search for ‘plan bee’
Faced with climate change, Pakistani honey producers search for ‘plan bee’
- Production badly affected by climate change, deforestation, unseasonable rains
- Business owners hopeful reforestation project might help
‘We manage dreams’: Football club nurtures underprivileged talent in Pakistan’s Islamabad
- POPO Football Club scouts raw talent from far-flung areas through referrals and viral videos
- Club provides meals, training and accommodation, has sent 36 players to national teams
ISLAMABAD: Tufail Gul tightened his shoelaces and stepped onto the pitch at Islamabad’s multi-purpose F-12 ground earlier this week, weaving past defenders before burying the ball in the net.
Not long ago, the 22-year-old was baking bread at a shop in his hometown of Pindi Gheb, about 100 kilometers from the Pakistani capital.
From a low-income family, Gul still works as a chef, an arrangement made by his club at its hostel so he can continue supporting his household, but his focus is firmly fixed on one ambition: earning a place in Pakistan’s national football team.
In Pakistan, where cricket dominates public attention and investment as a multi-billion-rupee industry, football has long existed on the margins. Despite strong grassroots followings in regions such as Balochistan and Karachi’s Lyari neighborhood, the sport has suffered from decades of administrative turmoil, limited infrastructure and scarce development pathways for young players.
Pakistan currently ranks 199th out of 210 teams in the FIFA world rankings, a reflection of these structural constraints. Against that backdrop, POPO Football Club, commonly known as POPO FC, has emerged as a rare exception, attempting to build a pipeline for underprivileged talent with little institutional support.
“POPO basically is a dream management organization where we manage the dreams of the underprivileged kids of Pakistan,” Haris bin Haroon, the club’s president, told Arab News.
“By underprivileged I mean the kids who are not financially strong or who don’t have resources to play football.”
Founded in 2013, POPO FC scouts raw talent from across the country through trials, personal referrals and viral social media videos. Over the past two years, the club has helped 36 players reach Pakistan’s Under-23, Under-19 and Under-17 national teams.
Gul is one of them.
“My parents are happy as I am playing football,” he told Arab News, adding that they are satisfied that “their son is working alongside it” and will move ahead in life.
Haroon, 37, who holds a master’s degree in management sciences and previously taught at the International Islamic University Islamabad, said the idea for the club took shape after a student’s unfulfilled football aspirations left a lasting impression on him.
Today, POPO FC operates as a residential academy, a rarity in Pakistan, offering free accommodation, meals, training and education to players with talent but no financial backing.
“At the moment, we have kids from all over Pakistan,” Haroon said, listing Panjgur, Dukki, Parachinar, Waziristan, Chitral, Mansehra, Azad Kashmir and Faisalabad.
“It is not POPO FC Islamabad, it is POPO FC Pakistan. Like Pakistan gathering to Islamabad.”
“HOLISTIC ENVIRONMENT”
The club’s intake combines structured trials with informal discovery. Players who gain attention online are often contacted directly.
One such case was Ihsanullah Khan, a seven-year-old from Dukki in Balochistan, who was brought to Islamabad after his football skills went viral in 2019 and were featured by local and international media, including Arab News.
POPO FC aims to provide what Haroon describes as a “holistic environment,” covering not only football training but also nutrition, housing and education. Players receive tailored diets high in carbohydrates and protein for training and recovery, while schooling is treated as a core requirement rather than an afterthought.
The club is currently training 104 players, including 47 full-time residents at its hostel who attend public and private schools, universities or sit for exams privately.
“We are providing them with education, and we are trying to provide them with the best education which I can possibly do,” Haroon said. “We are trying to cover all the aspects of life.”
Among the club’s standout success stories is Abdul Samad, 15, captain of Pakistan’s Under-17 team. Originally from Swat, Samad joined POPO FC eight years ago.
“I became captain because I had leadership qualities, I knew how to manage the team, and my game was strong,” he told Arab News.
Recalling his early days, Samad said: “I would eat biscuits for all three meals and train twice a day, and that is how I reached this stage.”
Those conditions have since changed.
“Now we have full facilities, everything, including food and education,” the ninth-grader said after a match.
One of the youngest recruits is Bait Ullah, a nine-year-old from militancy-hit South Waziristan, selected on the first day of trials last year.
Nicknamed “Nano Messi” by his peers, he has enrolled in school alongside daily training.
“Here, we play with the ball, whereas before we were mostly doing running,” he said. “I like Messi’s dribbling and passing, and when I grow up, I will become Messi.”
Living far from his family in a remote and volatile region, the sacrifice is not lost on him.
“Of course, I miss my parents, brothers, and sisters,” the nine-year-old said. “I am making this sacrifice so I can become a great footballer.”
