Unprecedented apple drop and market volatility have left farmers struggling to make ends meet, highlighting the need for urgent solutions and long-term strategies to revitalize the horticulture sector.

Horticulture, the backbone of Kashmir’s economy, provides livelihood to a varied class of people and contributes substantially towards the state’s GDP. Farmers invest their entire lifetime and all possible meager resources available at their disposal in developing and managing apple orchards. Not only paddy fields but drought-prone karewas have also been converted into cash crop orchards with the sole aim of bringing socioeconomic prosperity through poverty alleviation, employment generation, nutritional security, and environmental safety.

Alluring educated youth to adopt horticulture as a career, even old fruit-bearing traditional orchards are being converted into ultra-high-density, early-maturity, and high-producing apple varieties. This significant progress has materialized due to unflinching research endeavors from scientists, strenuous efforts by hardworking growers, and generous support from government agencies, especially through the recently launched Government of India-sponsored holistic agriculture development project. This project envisions the provision of subsidies for apple orchard development, improved irrigation facilities, and the establishment of cold storage facilities and processing units.

Despite all these extraordinary initiatives taken by the concerned stakeholders, growers can hardly manage to eke out sustenance from their lifeline: apple farming. The alarming increase in the disproportionately widening gap between production costs and the returns from the sale of produce leaves growers grappling miserably with this unending disastrous situation. Apple prices have remained almost stagnant, with minor fluctuations over the past decade, while most inputs required for maintaining orchards, as well as harvesting and marketing the produce, have witnessed manifold increases during this period.

To counter this grave situation, the only immediate and feasible solution for growers appears to be an extraordinary increase in productivity — beyond their imagination and capacity. Anxious growers, in an effort to maximize productivity, spare no effort and resort to using any highly-priced fungicides and fertilizers available on the market. They even overenthusiastically double the number of fungicide sprays and fertilizer doses, totally ignoring recommended practices, including the spray schedule.

However, farmers need to be cautious of the dire consequences of wrong selection or overuse of fungicides, which can adversely affect the environment, human health, and crop quality, in addition to causing huge economic loss. Superb high-yielding, early-harvesting, insect- and pest-resistant apple varieties, if made available, could provide some respite to dismayed growers, but they are not a long-lasting solution.

Enveloped by enormous uncertainties, especially market volatility and unaware of any calamity — whether natural or man-made — the hapless grower always looks to the sky, hoping to know what this season’s destiny will yield. Despite putting his heart into nurturing each apple tree, every year one or another calamity befalls him, whether it be road blockades, plummeting prices due to duty-free import of apples from other countries, low demand, windstorms, hailstorms, or disease outbreaks.

This season’s unprecedented premature apple drop wreaked havoc, aggravating an already dire situation caused by a huge drop in apple production. So grave is the situation that farmers spend more time collecting dropped apples than picking fresh ones. Adding insult to injury, these dropped apples are purchased at throwaway prices by continuously chanting “schaant hevaan” (buying dropped apples), a noise pollution-creating group of small, auto-mobile buyers. In connivance with organized middlemen, they have created a parallel apple market, which negatively impacts the sale price of mature, harvested quality apples.

Spurious pesticide use, improper spray timing, faulty pruning, erratic weather-induced diseases, and deranged calcium and mineral uptake are speculated to be responsible for this situation. However, a specific cause needs to be identified and a solution provided for future prevention. Ideally, a mechanism should be in place for the procurement of these dropped apples at a reasonable rate, allowing their proper use in making quality apple products locally, thus safeguarding both the environment and the farmers’ interests.

Resuscitative measures like minimum support prices and crop insurance, if considered at this critical juncture, would go a long way in helping the sector sustain itself. Tackling this situation in isolation will serve no purpose. Instead, all stakeholders need to sit together to develop both short-term and long-term strategies to mitigate the suffering of growers — the backbone of the sector.

Major factors discernible even to a common man include the non-availability of quality fungicides, pesticides, and fertilizers at affordable rates, a lack of proper market infrastructure, limited market access, insufficient storage and transport facilities at reasonable rates, and the absence of processing units to avoid wastage and spoilage of produce. Moreover, a large chain of exorbitantly charging commission agents between the grower and the consumer continues to be an issue. Market information and intelligence are paramount in maintaining steady crop prices through controlled supply according to consumer demand.

A long-term strategy should ideally envision integrated, multiple, and mixed farming systems with diversification of fruits in the horticulture sector as a whole and the diversification of varieties within each fruit in line with the type of soil, availability of irrigation, demand for the fruit, and its variety according to consumer choice. Other major fruits cultivated in the valley, such as pears, apricots, peaches, plums, cherries, grapes, and dry fruits like walnuts and almonds, deserve equal attention for propagation, popularization, and adoption to avoid the excessive production and supply of one particular fruit amidst dwindling demand.

Kashmiri walnuts, being organic, of superior quality, and highly nutritious, are in high demand worldwide. Since Kashmir is the export zone for apples and walnuts, establishing regular walnut orchards on the analogy of apple orchards — by providing farmers with disease-free, high-performing high-density and hybrid planting material from recognized nurseries — would be beneficial in sustaining the horticulture sector and safeguarding the grower’s interests.

Encouraging farmers to adopt walnut orchards, particularly on drought-prone karewas and hilly areas, as a lifetime profession akin to apple orchards, should be seriously considered. However, the Jammu and Kashmir Preservation of Specified Trees Act of 1969, which bans the cutting and pruning of walnut trees (traditional varieties), should not apply to high-density and hybrid walnut plantations.

Though globally appealing, adopting high-tech procedures like artificial intelligence to detect nutrient requirements, diagnose diseases, and suggest or administer remedial measures in time, as well as using drone technology for orchard sprays, is no doubt a welcome step — but only after mastering the basics. Our farmers, being mostly marginal with very small land holdings, necessitate planning, financing, and technology adoption at the micro level.

By Prof (Dr) Jalal-ud-Din Parrah

[email protected]

Prof (Dr) Jalal-ud-Din Parrah