WHY KASHMIR'S SAFFRON GROWERS ARE FEELING BLUE

Climate change is wreaking havoc on the livelihoods of saffron growers and other farmers in the UT

- Irfan Amin Malik

Mohammad Ashraf Khan, a farmer, has been cultivating saffron in Lethpora, Pampore, for the last four Last year, however, he could not harvest his crop until November. "The saffron harvest season starts in October but till the first week of November, I had no yield. In the last week of the season I was able to harvest about 50% of the normal produce," the 50-yearold laments. "The highlands, mostly visible on the Srinagar-Jammu national highway near Pampore, have become a desert."

Another farmer, Abdul Gani Reshi, 55, who cultivates saffron on an acre and a half of land, tells Mint that during the first half of the season he managed to harvest just 12 gm of saffron.

"Three decades back, we would get around 2 kg of produce in a day, and during the whole season, the yield was more than a quintal," says Khan. With the saffron industry in the doldrums, his family is considering switching to other crops.

Khan, Reshi and other farmers blame climate change and the lack of irrigation facilities for hindering the growth of saffron, which is used in the food, pharmaceuticals, cosmetics and perfumery industries. Known to some as the king of spices', saffron is an expensive buythe Kashmiri variety is sold at 2,000 to £2,200 per 10 gm. The overall industry, however, is small, and in the region of 300 crore, as saffron is not a crop with a huge output.

Reshi says that the saffron, which is known for its aroma and colour, requires intermittent rains between mid August and mid September for a good flush of flowers during the harvest season. Last year, however, the prolonged dry spell delayed the harvest. Saffron was cultivated on 5,707 hectares of land in 1997-98, as per government data. That had shrunk to around 3,715 hectares till 2021-22.