A friend visiting Kashmir from Lucknow recently went to the annual Kisan Mela organised by Sher-e-Kashmir University of Agricultural, expecting to see what most visitors see at such events: farmers examining tools, young growers asking experts about spray schedules, stall owners displaying new varieties, and agricultural officers speaking about productivity and yield.
Instead, he witnessed something that said more about Kashmir’s horticulture than any official presentation could.
He saw a poor man moving from stall to stall, asking for help. The man was begging.
Yet what startled my friend was not only his poverty, but what he was carrying in his other hand: two grafting sticks of apple, carefully held, as if they were more valuable than money itself.
That image deserves to stay with us. Even a beggar at a farmers’ fair in Kashmir was carrying apple grafts home.
Even in distress, he had not given up on horticulture. Even at the edge of want, he still imagined a future in which he could plant, graft, wait, and harvest.
In Kashmir, horticulture is not merely an occupation. It is memory, aspiration, inheritance, and survival.
That is why the crisis of horticulture in the Valley cannot be treated as an ordinary administrative matter.
Horticulture is one of the strongest pillars of Jammu and Kashmir’s economy, especially in the Valley, where apple cultivation shapes village life, seasonal labour, transport activity, and household income.
The J&K Economic Survey identifies horticulture as a sector of major economic importance, while NITI Aayog’s 2026 roadmap treats it as a strategic growth engine with potential for value addition, exports, and rural prosperity.
In simple terms, when horticulture suffers, Kashmir suffers.
That is why the sight of a poor man clutching two apple grafts is so powerful.
It captures a truth that policymakers often miss: people remain emotionally and economically invested in orchards even when the system around them fails.
The apple tree is still seen as a route to dignity. But hope alone is not enough when growers are trapped between unstable prices, lack of storage, road disruptions, and repetitive seasonal losses.
The first major problem is the price that growers receive for their produce.
In Kashmir, prices often collapse during the harvest season because too much fruit reaches the market at the same time, while growers have limited ability to hold stock or bargain for better returns.
This is made worse by weak grading systems and poor market intelligence.
NITI Aayog argues that Jammu and Kashmir must shift from volume-led horticulture to value-led horticulture, which means quality differentiation, better market organisation, and stronger branding.
For many small growers, however, the reality is harsh.
They cannot wait indefinitely for prices to improve because they need immediate cash to pay labour, transport charges, carton costs, and debt.
So, they sell quickly, often at distress rates. This is where the crisis becomes human.
The man my friend saw at the Kisan Mela may have been poor enough to beg, but he still carried apple grafts because he knew that horticulture remains one of the few rural pathways to stability.
The tragedy is that the system often rewards that faith with low price realisation.
An empowered task force could intervene here by improving market transparency, strengthening farmer-producer organisations, building price intelligence systems, encouraging grade-based sales, and linking growers to better domestic and export channels.
Such intervention would not eliminate market risk entirely, but it would reduce the helplessness that currently forces growers to sell on terms dictated by urgency rather than value.
The second major issue is storage, especially the shortage of controlled atmosphere (CA) storage.
In an apple economy, storage is not a luxury. It is the difference between planned marketing and distress sales.
If growers can safely store fruit, they can avoid flooding the market immediately after harvest. If they cannot, prices fall, spoilage rises, and desperation deepens.
The Government of India has already recognised that post-harvest losses in fruits and vegetables are economically substantial.
In Parliament, the government referred to the CIPHET study estimating the economic value of quantitative post-harvest losses across 45 major agricultural commodities at Rs. 92,651 crores, and it listed several schemes meant to strengthen post-harvest infrastructure, including MIDH, NHB, PM Kisan Sampada Yojana, and the Agriculture Infrastructure Fund.
This national concern is especially relevant to Kashmir, where long-distance marketing and mountain geography make storage even more critical.
NITI Aayog’s roadmap clearly emphasises post-harvest infrastructure and logistics modernisation as central to horticulture reform in Jammu and Kashmir.
Yet the problem in Kashmir is not only the existence of schemes; it is the persistent gap between policy intent and actual affordable storage access on the ground.
A strong task force could identify district-level deficits, fast-track cold-chain investment, ensure that small and medium growers are not excluded, and treat storage as a strategic public priority rather than a narrow commercial service.
The third issue is transport. Kashmir’s fruit economy depends heavily on timely road movement.
A crop may be successfully grown and harvested, but if it cannot move quickly and safely to outside markets, much of its value disappears.
Highway disruption, bad weather, landslides, traffic congestion, and delays in movement can all damage the economics of horticulture.
For perishable produce, delay is costly. Fruit loses shelf life, appearance, firmness, and market value.
Repeated transport disruption means higher spoilage, lower auction prices, increased freight burden, and weaker confidence among buyers in terminal markets.
NITI Aayog’s emphasis on competitiveness and value-chain strengthening makes clear that horticulture reform cannot stop at the orchard gate; it must include logistics and market access.
A dedicated horticulture task force could establish harvest-season transport protocols, work with traffic and disaster-management agencies, support refrigerated movement, and create emergency coordination systems when routes are disrupted.
In Kashmir, where a blocked route can affect thousands of boxes of fruit, transport planning is not a side issue. It is central to the grower’s income.
The fourth critical problem is the lack of information and coordination in horticulture schemes like JKCIP (Jammu and Kashmir Competitiveness Improvement of Agriculture & Allied Sectors Project) and HADP (Holistic Agriculture Development Program), which operate in silos with poor information sharing.
While these initiatives provide funding for orchards, infrastructure, and market access, their disjointed implementation creates confusion among growers about eligibility, creates overlapping targets, and leaves critical gaps unaddressed.
The strongest case for an empowered task force lies in the losses that the sector has experienced in recent years.
These losses are not caused by one problem alone. They emerge when bad rates, poor storage, transport bottlenecks, adverse weather, and market disorganisation overlap.
The damage then spreads across the entire rural economy, affecting growers, labourers, traders, packers, and transport operators.
Recent reporting indicates that the losses have been substantial. Newspapers have reported that Kashmir’s fruit sector suffered losses of about INR 2,000 crore in 2025.
Wider reporting over recent years has repeatedly described severe damage linked to road blockades, weather shocks, weak prices, and post-harvest constraints.
Figures reinforce what the Government of India’s own post-harvest loss assessments already suggest at the national level: fruit losses are a major economic problem and need integrated remedies, not scattered responses.
For Kashmir, the meaning of these losses is deeper because horticulture carries unusual social weight.
A crop failure or price collapse in such a region does not remain confined to one farm. It ripples through villages and families.
It affects debt, marriage, education, migration, and social morale. The state owes such people more than sympathy; it owes them effective policy.
Kashmir does not need another weak committee that meets occasionally and produces routine recommendations.
It needs an empowered horticulture task force with authority to coordinate departments, monitor implementation, remove bottlenecks, and intervene quickly when problems arise.
NITI Aayog’s roadmap is itself framed in mission mode, which shows that the challenge is cross-sectoral and requires convergence among institutions.
Such a task force should bring together the horticulture department, planning agencies, transport authorities, marketing bodies, financial institutions, researchers, cold-chain operators, and representatives of growers.
Its role should include price stabilisation measures, post-harvest infrastructure planning, market intelligence, export promotion, crop-loss tracking, and emergency transport coordination.
Only a body with this range can respond to the true complexity of Kashmir’s horticulture economy.
Kashmir would not be alone in adopting such a model.
Other regions in India have used high-level coordination mechanisms for agriculture and horticulture development, especially where geography and infrastructure gaps create special challenges.
The North Eastern Region has relied on high-level task force mechanisms and inter-governmental coordination for project facilitation and regional development.
Mountain states such as Himachal Pradesh have also long shown that horticulture requires coordinated policy attention because production, storage, extension, and transport are deeply connected.
The broader lesson is straightforward. Where horticulture is central to the economy and where geography creates logistical vulnerability, governance must be stronger and more integrated. Jammu and Kashmir meets both conditions fully.
The story from the Kisan Mela should not be forgotten. A man with almost nothing was still carrying two apple grafting sticks home.
That means horticulture in Kashmir is not just a sector; it is a stubborn form of hope.
But hope cannot survive indefinitely in a system broken by low prices, minimum policy awareness, inadequate CA storage, transport uncertainty, and recurring losses.
Kashmir needs an empowered horticulture task force because the crisis is structural, not seasonal.
The rate problem needs market reform. The storage problem needs urgent infrastructure expansion.
The transport problem needs coordinated logistics. The losses of the past five years need continuous monitoring and rapid response.
If the state wants to protect rural livelihoods and preserve one of Kashmir’s greatest economic strengths, then horticulture must be governed with the seriousness it deserves.
The author is an entrepreneur managing infrastructure and agricultural ventures in Kashmir. He is also a fellow of the Ananta Aspen Global Leadership Network (AGLN).
