Kashmir unrest to affect apple prices this season

With production already down this season, the J&K unrest has further put a spanner in the supplies that are down by 25% so far

India’s favourite winter fruit, apple, is set to get dearer this season. Besides the production of the fruit being down this year, the ongoing unrest in Kashmir, the leading producer of apples, has also pushed supplies down by 25 per cent, claim traders.

At present, the prices of different grades of apples range from Rs 350-Rs 1,100 per box. Ravinder Chauhan, president of the Apple Grower Association of India, claimed the traders have already realised 35 per cent more prices this season, compared to last year, owing to lower production.

J&K roughly accounts for nearly 65 per cent of India’s apple production, followed by Himachal Pradesh. Rafiq Ahmad Hakim, director, state horticulture department, informed that last year the total fruits production (including dry fruits) in J&K was around 2 million tonnes, and around 80 per cent of this were apples (roughly around 1.6 million tonnes).

This year, he added, the quality of the fruit is good, and J&K is targeting to send around 1.3 million tonnes of apples to different mandis across India and expects the total fruit production to be around 1.4 million tonnes. Hakim, however, sounded confident of weathering the crisis that plagues the Valley at the moment and claimed that around 800-900 truckloads of fruits from J&K every day are headed to different centres across India, including Amritsar, Delhi, Ahmedabad, Mumbai and Bangalore.

Chauhan, however, claimed the supplies from J&K are down by around 25-30 per cent at the moment. He also elaborated that production is a bit down this year. “Himachal has produced 22 million boxes (each box is around 16 kg) this year, down from 30 million boxes last season. Similarly, J&K has produced around 90 million boxes this year, down from 110 million boxes last year,” Chauhan said, adding J&K is also facing labour shortage, owing to the long period of unrest this year.

So far this year, however, J&K has managed to send more apples to the market, compared to the same period last year. “From May to mid-September, we have already supplied 155,000 tonnes of apples this year, compared to 95,000 tonnes during the same period last year,” Hakim informed. He also added the peak season has just begun for apples and would continue till December, however, how much J&K is able to supply will depend on the production.

In 2015-16, the overall apple production in India stood at 2.8 million, bulk of which came from J&K, followed by Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Sikkim and Tamil Nadu.