FUENTE 

After a very troubled childhood and youth, James Brett in 1999, initiated the pomegranate juice industry in the UK by founding and launching Pomegreat, Britain's first Pomegranate juice brand. In 2007, whilst attending a seminar on pomegranates in Kabul, he took his well documented stroll into a poppy field and convinced the farmer that 'Pomegranate is the Answer'. POM354 was born.

The project and James' ability to present the logic of his ideas directly to the farmers meant that from March 2008, POM354 quickly gathered momentum. In that month, some 400 Tribal Elders from Nangarhar province attended the first POM354 Jirga and adopted the project as their own.

In September 2008, another Jirga was arranged with Tribal Elders from four provinces. The outcome was the same and led directly to a National Jirga with some 6,500 Tribal Elders and farmers attending, on 27 November 2008 in Jalalabad. As a sign of commitment and Unity, immediately after this Jirga, an estimated US$780,000,000 of heroin was burnt.

Out of the 25,000 initial farmers approached, 22,000 have signed up to the pilot and in March 2009, James began the planting of 40,000 pomegranate trees