Kashmir's Apple Industry Is Fighting A Tough Battle Against Climate, Tariffs and a Difficult Supply Chain

Kashmir's apple industry, worth an estimated Rs. 15,000 crore and sustaining nearly 20 lakh livelihoods, is no longer fighting a single adversary. 

In 2025-26, floods, import tariff cuts, highway blockades, and policy instability arrived simultaneously, turning what should have been a bumper harvest of 20.79 lakh metric tonnes into a season defined by loss, anxiety, and unanswered demands. 

When the Floods Destroyed The Orchards

Bashir Ahmad Dar, a small grower from Shopian, told us in a defeated tone over the call, about how his 2025 harvest began not with ripe fruit but with a submerged orchard. "This year's flooding wasn't like earlier seasons, water stood for days and suffocated the roots. Nearly 30 per cent of my apples dropped before harvest, and some trees may not recover for years." Across Pulwama, Sopore, and Baramulla, the story was the same.

Agriculture Minister of the State, Javid Ahmad Dar, confirmed that floods damaged 431 hectares of orchard land, with losses exceeding 33 per cent in affected areas. Combined flood and highway closure losses were estimated at Rs. 5,000 crore by sector bodies, while landslides that shut the Srinagar-Jammu National Highway during peak harvest alone caused Rs. 6–7 billion in losses. A hailstorm in June 2025 had already ravaged South Kashmir's orchards before the monsoon season even arrived.

The damage, as Abdul Rashid Waniof Sopore explains, is often invisible at first. "After the water recedes, the fruit looks fine, but later it rots in storage. We lost quality-grade fruit, the kind that sells for premium rates in Delhi and Mumbai." Ghulam Mir, a marginal farmer from Pulwama, warns that a 20 per cent yield loss can become a 50 per cent income loss when peak arrivals depress prices simultaneously. Despite targeted compensation payouts confirmed in Bandipora, the Kashmir Valley Fruit Growers-cum-Dealers Union submitted a formal memorandum ahead of the 2026 Union Budget warning of "irreversible damage" without crop insurance, cold-storage funding, and a price support scheme, demands that successive governments have deferred for years.

The Tariff Earthquake That Has Shook The Industry

The trade policy shock arrived in early 2026. Under the evolving US-India bilateral trade framework, India agreed to reduce tariffs on American apple imports from approximately 50 per cent to around 25 per cent. The impact on import volumes had already been dramatic: US apple arrivals rose from 5,000 tonnes in 2022 to 7,000 tonnes in 2023, then surged to 37,000 tonnes in 2024, and crossed 60,000 tonnes in 2025. Duties on European apples are being reduced to 20 per cent, capped at 50,000 tonnes annually, while New Zealand receives concessions for 45,000 metric tonnes at 25 per cent duty.

"Trade decisions made in Delhi or Washington seem distant, but they hit us directly in the mandi," says Mushtaq Ahmad Bhat, a grower from Anantnag. For Farooq Abdullah, a large orchard owner, the structural disadvantage is stark. Imported apples arrive with better packaging, longer shelf life, and foreign government subsidies behind them. The political reaction has been unusually unified. Chief Minister Omar Abdullah publicly described the US deal as a potential "death blow" to apples and walnuts and is reportedly seeking a joint representation with Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand to the Centre. The Fruit Growers and Dealers Union leader, Bashir Ahmed Bashir, called tariff cuts the "final nail in the coffin." The Kashmir Valley Fruit Growers-cum-Dealers Union formally appealed to Prime Minister Modi to impose import duties exceeding 100 per cent on US and European apples.

Mohammad Ashraf, President of the Fruit Growers Association Shopian, has also demanded a ban on Iranian apple imports, while Bashir Ahmad of the Kashmir Fruit Association confirmed that mandi traders have resolved to stop accepting Turkish apple imports, a sign of how multi-directional the threat has become. 

The Road That Breaks the Supply Chain

Kashmir's produce travels to market through a single artery, the Srinagar-Jammu National Highway. Apples must reach buyers within four to five days before quality deteriorates. Every landslide or administrative closure transforms a farming crisis into a financial catastrophe.

Tariq Shah, a farmer from Shopian, captures the double bind, "Freight rates increase when routes are restricted, and traders offer lower prices because they fear spoilage. We lose both ways." Grower unions estimated losses of Rs. 500–700 crore during a single major 2025 highway shutdown. A government rail service did provide partial relief, moving approximately 14,000 tonnes during disruptions, though road transport still carries the bulk of the crop. 

Minister Javid Ahmad Dar reported that only about 1 per cent of the crop ultimately remained stranded, a figure growers dispute as ignoring indirect losses of quality, price, and export contracts. Kashmir exported 13.35 lakh metric tonnes of apples in 2023-24, but only 2.53 lakh metric tonnes had been recorded by September 2025, a figure shaped as much by logistics failure as by climate damage.

Surviving the Storm

The crisis facing Kashmir's orchards in 2025-26 is one of simultaneity. Climate shocks, trade reversals, and logistics failures are converging, amplifying each other, and landing on a farming community that is under-insured and ill-equipped to compete with subsidised global rivals.

Fayaz Khan, a cold-storage operator, sees a possible silver lining: imports could force improvements in grading, packaging, and branding. But investment in controlled-atmosphere storage and modern sorting lines remains beyond most growers' reach. GulshanKhemu, an orchardist from Baramulla, offers the sharpest prescription, "What we really need is preventive infrastructure, drainage systems, flood-resistant orchard planning, crop insurance, and cold storage. The focus should shift from relief to resilience."

Kashmir's apple sector contributes 8 per cent to the territory's GSDP and supports 3.5 million people in direct and indirect employment. It has survived conflict, isolation, and decades of policy neglect. Whether it can now survive simultaneous climate disruption, a liberalising trade regime, and the continuing absence of the infrastructure its farmers have been demanding for a generation is the question that no government survey, no relief package, and no trade negotiation has yet answered with any conviction.