Kashmir’s apple growers face a misplaced harvest

“We wait all 12 months for this season, however it has gone to waste. From ₹2.5 lakh final 12 months, my orchard has fetched solely about ₹50,000 this time,” says the 42-year-old, because the pungent odor of decay hangs within the air.

The extended closure of the Srinagar-Jammu Nationwide Freeway, the Valley’s solely street hyperlink to the remainder of India, has left fruit growers stranded with their crop.

With transport lower off since heavy rainfall on 25 August broken stretches of the street, growers are actually pressured to decide on between leaving apples on the timber, the place they danger falling and rotting, or harvesting them solely to look at the fruit rot in vehicles stranded alongside the freeway.

Kashmir produces about 80% of India’s apples, and the trade has already suffered losses of over ₹1,000 crore—a determine that continues to climb, threatening the livelihoods of hundreds throughout the Valley.

Widespread harm

Among the many 7,000 villagers concerned in apple farming in Nanwai’s village, Marhama, there’s not a single one that has escaped losses. “I’ve by no means seen orchards affected by spoiled fruit or growers weeping among the many timber as I’ve this season.”

Throughout the Valley, the scene is grim, with growers’ faces etched with despair, crates standing empty, and orchards strewn with rotting apples. Farmers watch helplessly because the season slips away, their hopes dashed by infrastructure that has failed to attach them to the market.

September, as soon as essentially the most promising month of the 12 months, has change into a stark reminder of their vulnerability to logistical bottlenecks.

Pictures of decaying apples being dumped are circulating broadly on social media, highlighting a disaster that has pressured fruit markets to close and left hundreds of households, for whom horticulture is the spine of the native financial system, dealing with vital losses.

In Tral, 40 kilometres from Srinagar, Suhail Ahmad Sheikh stands beneath his apple timber, watching the fruit fall and decay on the bottom. “The harvest is prepared, however no dealer is prepared to purchase,” he says.

In earlier years, even bruised apples had been collected by load carriers and bought cheaply in native markets. This time, with transport routes blocked and patrons absent, the crop is left to decay, a tragic reminder of how fragile livelihoods are when a single street holds the destiny of a whole season.

Sheikh, whose orchard spans 20 kanals, estimates that almost 80% of his crop has perished this season.

He explains that his annual enter prices— ₹1.5 lakh on sprays, pesticides, and fertilizers, plus one other ₹50,000 on labour—could not even be recovered this 12 months. “I concern this 12 months the enter price could not even attain growers,” he says whereas gesturing towards the apples rotting on the bottom.

The 45-year-old factors to the dearth of juice-processing and cold-storage amenities in Kashmir as a important vulnerability. “If juice-processing models had been obtainable, at the least the fallen fruit may have been used to supply some reduction to farmers. Equally, adequate cold-storage amenities may have preserved the apples and allowed them to be shipped as soon as the 270km freeway reopened.”

Managed ambiance (CA) storage helps lengthen the shelf lifetime of perishable produce by regulating oxygen, carbon dioxide, nitrogen, humidity, and temperature. Whereas frozen storage can protect many meals merchandise for years, recent objects like apples can’t be saved beneath such circumstances. For apples, the best storage temperature is maintained between 0°C and three°C.

Jammu and Kashmir has solely 85 chilly storage models with a mixed capability of 341,000 metric tonnes, adequate for nearly 14-17% of the area’s annual apple manufacturing.

Nanwai says the failed season has left loans unpaid, disrupted youngsters’s schooling, and pushed households into monetary insecurity. “We’re six relations, and apples are our foremost supply of earnings. Now, with the season ending in catastrophe, we’re looking at a bleak future.”

Fragile provide chain

In Chek village of Awantipora in Kashmir’s Pulwama district, Sajad Ahmad Dar rues a choice that has price him dearly. Earlier than landslides and a cloudburst crippled the Srinagar-Jammu freeway, a dealer had provided him ₹37 lakh for the apples on his 20-kanal orchard, residence to 2,800 timber. Dar held out for ₹40 lakh.

However because the freeway stayed shut for weeks, costs collapsed and the fruit started to decay. “I now needed to promote your entire produce for simply ₹21.85 lakh, towards an enter price of almost ₹13 lakh,” says the 42-year-old, whose loss captures the precariousness of Kashmir’s apple commerce.

Authorities briefly thought-about rerouting vehicles through the Mughal Street, however its slim and treacherous terrain couldn’t deal with heavy automobiles. Even the Indian Railways launched particular parcel trains to move apples to Delhi, but they might carry solely a fraction of the harvest.

“Transporting apples by practice will not be a sensible answer. Railway stations are situated removed from fruit markets, including additional prices and lowering growers’ income,” says Mohammad Ashraf Wani, president of the mega fruit mandi in Shopian.

Contained in the mega fruit mandi in Shopian, tons of of vehicles stand idle, already loaded with apple produce and ready for the freeway to totally reopen. With storage choked and vehicles full, merchants are refusing to just accept the brand new crop, leaving growers with no patrons.

The standard buzz on the fruit mandi is lacking this season, with apple cartons that may sometimes promote for ₹700-1,200 now fetching simply ₹300-700. Every day arrivals of 200,000-250,000 cartons are creating oversupply, driving costs down additional and deepening losses for growers.

All fruit mandis in Kashmir, together with the Shopian mandi, additionally remained closed for 2 days in protest towards the stoppage of fruit-laden vehicles on the freeway.

By the point the freeway was partially reopened for heavy automobiles, many vehicles had already reached markets with spoiled fruit, leading to substantial monetary losses for growers.

“When the street reopened after three weeks, hundreds of stranded vehicles reached markets without delay. Apples, which have a really quick shelf life, both went unhealthy or misplaced high quality, triggering losses throughout the provision chain,” says Bashir Ahmad Basheer, chairman of the Kashmir Valley Fruit Growers cum Sellers Union.

Basheer estimates the trade has already misplaced between ₹1,000 crore and ₹1,200 crore. With mandis struggling to clear the backlog, merchants have stopped accepting recent arrivals from growers.

“In a standard season, 1,000-1,500 apple vehicles transfer day by day from Srinagar to Delhi. This 12 months, the move was disrupted, and freight expenses surged from ₹70 per 16kg field to ₹250, putting monumental pressure on growers. Various routes, such because the Mughal Street, are both unsuitable for heavy automobiles or not virtually viable,” he provides.

The sudden disruption in apple provides from Kashmir has pressured merchants throughout the nation to hunt various sources, whereas growers within the Valley watch their crop lose worth, with costs tumbling almost 40%.

For instance, Sheikh says, an 18kg field of Kuloo apples that bought for ₹1,000-1,200 final September is now fetching simply ₹700-800. Equally, a 20kg field of high-density apples, which was bought for ₹1,500-1,800 in August 2024, was this 12 months bought at solely ₹800.

In Sopore, about 45km from Srinagar and residential to Asia’s largest fruit market, merchants are asking growers to halt deliveries as a scarcity of vehicles and disrupted transport chokes the provision chain.

“We can not settle for recent apples with a brief shelf life when site visitors is restricted to a single lane, permitting just a few vehicles to maneuver alongside the freeway. Storing apples available in the market would solely result in spoilage, because the considerable crop has already reached the market, however there isn’t any method to transport it additional,” says a dealer in Sopore, usually known as the “Apple city of Kashmir”.

A perennial subject

Ejaz Ayoub, a Srinagar-based economist, questions why highways within the area are repeatedly affected throughout peak harvest seasons, noting a sample that has persevered over time. “I’ve noticed that each harvest season, the highways face disruptions. In 2022, for instance, a fruit grower even set fireplace to packing containers of freshly harvested apples in protest over the closure,” he recollects.

Ayoub emphasises the financial stakes, saying a big variety of Kashmiri households depend on apple farming, one of many area’s largest sources of income. “Agriculture and allied sectors, together with apples, contribute 19.72% to our financial system, whereas tourism accounts for simply 3.5% of gross home product (GDP). I fail to grasp why a 300-meter stretch of freeway remained dilapidated for therefore lengthy, particularly throughout peak harvest season, when provide shortages have additionally fuelled inflation.”

Authorities now declare over 137,000 metric tonnes of recent fruit have moved out of the Valley up to now 10 days. However growers argue the shipments are a drop within the ocean, nowhere close to sufficient to offset the mounting losses this harvest season.

In accordance with Basheer, months of toil within the orchards have yielded solely losses, making compensation important for growers to outlive the blow.

Kashmir provides apples to fruit markets throughout India, together with Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Ahmedabad, and Kolkata, in addition to worldwide markets in West and South-East Asia.

Basheer factors out that each growers and merchants are extra involved concerning the future than the current, fearing that the freeway will proceed to face disruptions from cloudbursts, landslides, and mudslides throughout peak harvest season every year.

“The query is what the federal government is planning on doing to mitigate such dangers and stop recurring losses to the apple trade, which stays the spine of Kashmir’s financial system.”