Enter The Apple Shift

Apple orchards are taking over the paddy fields of Kashmir. There’s promise and a fear.

- Naseer Ganai

At Mohanpora hamlet, 15 km from Shopian town, a 52-year-old farmer Bashir Ahmad Dar is working hard at his apple orc­hard spread over 25 kanals (0.8 acre equals 1 kanal) with his wife, son and two daughters. They are busy selecting the best apples and packing them in crates to be sent to various states. Bashir recalls Mohanpora was once all agriculture land, where the farmers used to grow paddy. That began to change in the 1980s, with more and more farmers turning their rice fields into apple orchards.

In 2014-15, rice production was pegged at 3.98 metric tonne (MT) per hectare, while last year’s apple production was 11.65 MT per hectare. With high-density plantation, apple production is expected to go up manifold in the coming years. The apple revolution took off despite the Land Revenue Act and the Jammu and Kashmir Agrarian Reforms Act pro­hibiting change of land use from agriculture to residential or horticultural. In the revenue records, the land in Mohan­pora continues to be paddy land. As the records have not been updated, the figures on land usage, cultivation and food deficit vary from department to department. In spite of variations in the rec­o­rds, though, the disappearance of paddy lands is visible in almost all districts of Kashmir division (one of the three adm­inistrative regions in Jammu and Kash­mir), except Budgam.

According to J&K consumer affairs minister Choudhary Zulfikar Ali, the state imports 7.51 lakh MT of rice from the Food Corporation of India (FCI) under the National Food Security Act and 5 lakh MTs from several states under various schemes. The state government doesn’t procure rice from the local farmers of Jammu and Kashmir as it is either for self-consumption or is sold to traders at higher than the government rates. Rice production in Kashmir division touched 5 lakh MT in 2008 and 5.61 lakh MT in 2011-12. And yet,