by Maleeha Sofi
SRINAGAR: This autumn, as the orchards of south Kashmir ripen with one of the finest apple crops in recent memory, clean, scabless, well-sized, and richly coloured, growers find themselves in deep distress. What should have been a season of relief and profit is instead being described as one of the most punishing in years.
In Shopian, the core of Kashmir’s apple belt, growers speak of spiralling costs and collapsing returns. Labour for harvesting has become prohibitively expensive. “We are paying Rs 800 to Rs 1,100 a day for picking,” one orchardist said, pointing out that the costs of even basic work are eating into already thin margins. Right now, tens of thousands of people from Chenab Valley, Rajouri, Poonch and Bihar are working in the apple orchards, busy harvesting and packing the fruit.
The crisis, they explained, is not limited to harvesting. Investments in apple cultivation began immediately after the 2024 harvest, with pruning, followed by rounds of fertiliser, pesticide sprays, nutrients, irrigation, and then packaging and storage. “We are only investing,” said a group of Shopian growers. “When will we get the returns?”
The other challenge is in what locals call girana, apples that fall prematurely and are usually sold for juice extraction. Of late, hundreds of small traders from plains purchase this and sell to the low income areas in UP, MP and other places. Owing to road closure, they came but could not purchase or transport it and the market collapsed.
Until last year, farmers could expect up to Rs 200 for a 24-kg box. This season, prices have crashed so steeply that a crate of fallen apples does not fetch even Rs 50. In the villages, the impact is visible. By the sides of streams and in secluded spots, mountains of rotting fruit lie abandoned. Some streams have even been choked by heaps of discarded apples.
Transport has turned into the most difficult challenge of all. The prolonged closure of the Jammu-Srinagar national highway this September meant large trucks could not reach the Valley in time. The stoppage disrupted supply lines at the peak of the harvest and inflicted what industry insiders estimate to be losses worth Rs 1,500 to Rs 2,000 crore.
Now, even as the highway reopens intermittently, freight costs have surged. Truck operators, citing losses and uncertainty, are charging rates that growers say are “back-breaking.” “It has become impossible to send the produce outside without losing money,” said another grower.
The squeeze has pushed thousands of farmers to rush their consignments into Lassipora in Pulwama, Kashmir’s biggest cold storage hub. But there too, chaos reigns. Long queues of trucks, some waiting days to be unloaded, clog the industrial estate. Smaller vehicles make two or more trips before they can unload, multiplying freight bills and adding to the already widening transport deficit. “Lassipora is inundated with trucks,” a trader remarked. “The entire system is overwhelmed.”
Amid the rush, allegations have surfaced that storage operators are dictating terms to desperate growers. With fruit arriving in bulk, farmers have little bargaining power, and many complain of being forced into unfavourable agreements. The glut has also crashed margins. One Shopian farmer said that after deducting the costs of harvesting, packaging, transport, and storage, he was left with barely Rs 55 in hand.
The irony is bitter: a good crop year has translated into a loss year. The combination of labour costs, fallen apple wastage, collapsed girana prices, highway disruptions, and transport bottlenecks has turned the season into a nightmare for growers. “We waited for a clean, scabless harvest for years,” said one orchardist, “but all the gain is getting buried under expenses and losses.”
For an economy where apples account for a lion’s share in Jammu and Kashmir’s GDP and sustain over three million people, the crisis could not have come at a worse time. As the fruit piles up unsold or abandoned, Kashmir’s growers say they see no way out unless the government intervenes on transport, cold storage regulation, and price support for girana. Otherwise, what promised to be a bumper harvest risks becoming a season remembered only for waste and ruin.
