Kashmir’s apple industry suffers as import of Iranian apples continues, despite poor quality, threat of new fungal disease

Shopian: Import of huge quantity of Iranian apple has had a devastating effect on the Kashmir apple industry. Rates have plunged by 40 percent since mid-November, traders based in Kashmir say.
The rates of Kashmiri apple started falling in wholesale markets after the onset of cold wave in north India and floods in south India. At the same time, import of Iranian apple, which is sold at cheaper prices after being dumped in India, undercut the Kashmiri apple trade.
Apple traders and growers in Kashmir are also apprehensive after fungal diseases were found in some consignments of Iranian apple. They fear that the imported apple may bring new diseases with itself.
Muhammad Ashraf Wani, a prominent apple grower and trader in Shopian, told Kashmir Reader that the growers and traders’ association is apprehensive about the safety of Kashmiri apples. “The government recently took immediate steps by banning Iranian kiwis after some novel diseases were found in them. Now that such diseases have been found in Iranian apple as well, the government should immediately stop its import,” he said, adding that while 40 diseases have been identified in Indian-origin apples, there are over 400 diseases found in apples produced in Iran.
All the apple from Iran is being brought to India via sea routes as most countries have refused to import the Iranian apple because of diseases and other quality issues, he said.
“We demand that the import should be stopped at the earliest. The import will wreak havoc on the apple industry not only by pushing down rates but also by bringing new diseases,” said Izhan Javid, chief executive officer of a fruit products company based in Kashmir.
For a decade now, the government has been spending thousands of crores of rupees in subsidiary schemes to cold storage unit owners and high-density fruit varieties, but now the government is allowing all that money to go waste by allowing free sale of sub- standard apples dumped in India, Javid said.
“Three Indian states are producing around 40 lakh metric tonnes of apple, but there is demand of over 45 lakh metric tonnes in India. When there is sufficient demand of our own apple, why to import other countries’ apple and destroy our own industry,” said Muhammad Ashraf Wani.
Basheer Ahmad Basheer, President of the Fruit and Vegetables Traders’ Mandi at Srinagar, told Kashmir Reader that traders and growers have taken fat loans from financial institutions and have stored apples in cold storages but the government is playing with their future by allowing import of Iranian apple which has been rejected by every country in the world,” Basheer said.
Basheer added that the rates of Kashmiri apple have come down by 40 percent, thus brining heavy losses to both traders and growers.
“We wrote to the union agriculture minister, to the prime minister of India, to the lieutenant governor of Jammu and Kashmir as well, but no action has been taken as yet,” he said.
Javid said that Iran is producing around 17 lakh metric tonnes of apple and when there is no demand for it in any part of the world, all of it is being brought to India, devastating the Indian market.
Fruit traders said that the union government is itself violating the slogan of ‘self reliant India’ by preferring Iranian apple over the Indian one.

Raashid Hassan