Ode to a Dying Orchard

From the orchard to the market, a Kashmiri farmer's son describes how the valley's lucrative apple industry leaves growers exposed to crushing costs and declining returns.

- Sameer Ahmad

The orchard is the first place I learned to measure time.

The blossoms announced spring, the green fruit carried us through summer, and the harvest marked the arrival of autumn. Every season had its ritual.

I remember my father pressing the soil in his palm as if he could read the future in its dampness. The orchard was his prayer mat, classroom, and inheritance.

I walk through the same rows now, trees heavy with apples, branches bent low as if bowing under a weight they were never meant to carry alone. They are beautiful, almost defiantly so, but their abundance feels cruel. The more they give us, the less we seem to receive.

Kashmir’s apple industry once stood as a pillar of our economy. It fed more than three million people, filled markets from Delhi to Dubai, and accounted for nearly eight percent of our region’s GDP.

The orchards were our banks, schools, and insurance. A good harvest could build a house. A poor one still promised survival. Today, that security is gone.