Bumper produce but low price dampening apple business

Unlike harvesting season in past years, when all roads in this hamlet would lead to orchards for apple plucking, not much activity is taking place this year. The sweetest of them all, ‘delicious’ variety of apples, are still hanging on trees in the orchards, as growers are reluctant to harvest the produce. The orchardists are apprehensive that less rates, which apples fetch in the mandis in J&K and across the country presently, would cause them huge losses.

Despite bumper fruit in orchards of Kashmir this year, growers are worried there will be major revenue shortfall compared to previous years. The officials estimate over 2 lakh additional fruit was produced in Kashmir this year. Annually 20 to 21 lakh metric tons of apples are produced in Kashmir. This year favourable weather conditions, especially timely rainfall resulted in bumper crop, mostly in two apple-rich belts of north and south Kashmir.

Director Horticulture, Ghulam Rasool acknowledged that Valley had bumper fruit this year.” As per our estimates, the fruit will be more than 23 lakh metric tons this year that resulted in more fruit trucks being dispatched to outside state mandies.”

From past two weeks, the heads of mandis, especially Asia’s second large fruit mandi has been asking growers not to flood mandis with apples. “The growers should delay apple harvest as sending more apples causes transport shortage, traffic jams on national highway besides drop in the rates,” said Irshad Ahmad, head of the trade at Sopore fruit mandi, which trades between 2.5 to 3.5 crore fruit boxes annually. “Due to abundant fruit, the mandi has to be closed for a day as the market rates aren’t convincingly good.”

Many growers have delayed harvest, however, they fear the delay could cause damages to fruit due to uncertain weather patterns. “Earlier, big commission agents used to buy apples from us in September. Now we are in October and only few people have turned for purchase of fruit,” said Shanawaz Khan who owns a big orchard near Lilam. “Commission agents aren’t getting good rates in the mandis, so they don’t show any interest in buying apples. Many people sell their produce on cheap rates,” he said.

Many growers say the moderate temperature resulted in the early harvest and also growers didn’t delay their harvest.

“Last year, I had purchased 4,000 apple boxes. I delayed harvest and suffered huge losses. This year, I went for early harvest with a hope of earning good money. For initial lot of produce, the rates were good but now it’s down by half,” said Farooq Ahmad, who owns a sale point at Handwara mandi. “I am unable to buy more fruits as I can’t offer good rates to growers.”

Despite increase in production, the growers are worried there could be revenue shortfall. “Though we had enough fruit this year but revenue wise it will be same even less compared to sales of last year. We hope the rates pick up in coming days, especially around Diwali season,” said Fayaz Ahmad, president fruit mandi Sopore.

Currently 1500 to 2000 truckloads of apples are dispatched from different places of Kashmir to various places outside J&K. And in coming days, it could cross 3000-mark. “Now our hope is the rates should go up as this could compensate our losses,” said Ahmad.

Around 7 lakh farming families, approximately 35 lakh people, are directly or indirectly associated with the horticulture sector. Apples contribute to around 8% of Jammu and Kashmir’s gross domestic product. Both dry and fresh fruits are grown over more than 3.37 lakh hectares of land and with every passing year, more land is brought under fruit cultivation. Alone apples are grown over 1.68 lakh hectares of land followed by pear which are grown on 14,161 hectares of land in the Valley.