THE UPSET APPLECART

A curious irony is growing in the apple orchards of rural Kashmir these day. In the daytime, you would be hard-pressed to find anyone outside their orchards. They are all hard at work, picking a bumper crop.

- Moazum Mohammad

The harvest this year, claim the growers and the horticulture department of Jammu and Kashmir, has broken all records. But the fruit of their labour does not seem to be reaching the villagers of the Valley. Multiple issues plague the Rs 10,000-crore horticulture sector, including disruptions in the supply chain, inflation, shortage of cold storages and labour, and import of Iranian apples. It scarcely bodes well for a sector that employs 700,000 families directly and another 3.5 million indirectly.

In south Kashmir's Shopian, known as the Apple Bowl of the Valley, Mushtaq Ahmad Malik is grappling with a double whammy-shortage of labour and transportation delay. The owner of orchards measuring 40 kanals in his village Pannu pays 10 labourers Rs 10,000 a day to pluck, sort and pack apples. His annual yield is 4,000 boxes of 17 kg each of two varieties of apple-juicy and crunchy Kullu and red delicious-from about 1,000 trees.

This year, his harvest is expected to rise by 150 per cent. But rather than bring him cheer, it has Malik worried. "Right now, it is a warlike situation. There is a scramble for labourers and packaging material etc.," he says. "Prices have shot through the roof, but the returns are not promising." Early this month, he had to sell two of his consignments at throwaway prices in Delhi.