Kashmir’s Apple Season Turns Sour

Freight Costs Triple, Boxes Rot In Mandis

- Observer News Service

The air inside Sopore fruit mandi is heavy, not with the usual chatter of auctioneers or the sweet smell of fresh harvest, but with silence and the stench of ripening apples left too long in the sun.

Crates are stacked like barricades, truck drivers nap on their bumpers, and growers sit cross-legged on empty wooden boxes, staring at their unsold produce.

“This place should be roaring by now,” said Faisal War, who manages transport at the mandi. “Instead, it feels like a graveyard. Our apples are dying a slow death here.”

Freight charges for apple consignments have tripled from 2100 to over 2350 per box, as transporters divert trucks through the longer, hilly Mughal Road. Thousands of boxes are still lying in the mandi, unable to move.

Growers say the delay is catastrophic. “Delicious apples that sold for 21,200 a box are now fetching barely 600,” said Tajamul Tantry, a seasoned orchardist from Sopore. “American apples meant for Bangladesh export are rotting.”