HP apple output again low this year

For the second year in a row, production of apple has registered a decline in Himachal Pradesh.

With the harvest season just over, the state has produced around 1.8 crore boxes — a quarter less than the average production.

Most of the fruit was harvested by the end of October and even now, the last of the trucks from the high mountain orchards of tribal Kinnaur are leaving.

Even though production was less, it didn’t result in the farmers managing to get a good return.

The primary reason attributed for this was the quality wasn’t mostly upto the mark as a dry summer, which result in poor size and colour of the fruit, played spoilsport.

 

Late monsoon showers didn’t help either, turning the fruit blackish.

Farmers also blame the whole sale buyers for manipulating the market. They say when the harvest began in July, bulk buyers, particularly those controlling smaller markets within the state, artificially jacked up the prices.

In July, prices of an apple box weighing 22 kg in markets within the state was as high as Rs 3,000 a box. But by early August the prices plummeted to Rs 1,500, while majority of the fruit sold at less than Rs 1,000 a box.

Farmers say such prices prevail only when there is a bumper crop, but this year the output was low and the demand remained high yet prices remained, largely, low.

Only in late September, when high-quality apples from the highlands of Kinnaur reached the markets did prices rise again but by then most of the produce had already been sold.

The state-run companies like HPMC and HIMFED also procured 11,700 tonnes of apple under market intervention scheme.

This apple is crushed and processed to produce juice, jam and chutney among other items.

In 2011, the state saw one of the lowest apple production in over a decade, at around 1.3 crore boxes.

2010 the state produced a record 4.46 crore boxes.

Area under apple cultivation was slowly growing every year. Shimla district alone accounts for 80 per cent of the state’s output. The rest is produced Kinnaur, Kullu, Solan and Mandi districts.

The apple industry is worth over Rs 2,000 crore in the state. Himachal accounts for a third of the country’s apple production while the remaining is produced by neighbouring Jammu & Kashmir and a negligible amount by Uttarakhand.

Horticulture department officials say the per-hectare-yield of the fruit ranges between five to seven tonnes, a figure far lower than in Europe and America .