Fruit Supplies Drop By 90%, Big Losses To Jammu Traders

The fruit mandi traders are in a bind as 90 percent of supplies of fruits from the Valley in the peak season is impacted. Traders say about 40 trucks get unloaded a day, according to a report in News 18. “This is for the first time in many decades that we are witnessing such a drop,” Parveen Kumar Gupta, president of the Jammu fruit association was quoted in the report. It is the season of apples. The Jammu fruit mandi, one of the premier markets of its kind in India, would daily receive, on average, 400 trucks, which is around 2,40,000 boxes of apple. There are 385 businessmen in the Jammu fruit mandi who receive apples from Kashmir between August and December. September to October is the peak season. However, after the central government stripped Jammu and Kashmir of its special status on August 5 and restructured the state into two union territories, life in Kashmir has been unsettled. Initially, there were curfew-like restrictions in most parts of the Valley. Later, the government eased the lockdown.

Now, life is limping back towards normalcy. Internet and mobile telephony are still curtailed in the Valley. In Jammu, the mobile internet remains snapped. In Kashmir, most of the apple growers are not plucking the yield which is ripe. At places, jihadi groups have allegedly issued threats to growers and buyers. The over Rs 8,000-crore apple industry, which is considered the backbone of Kashmir economy, remains badly hit. Authorities said this month that apples cultivated in Jammu and Kashmir will be procured directly from farmers by the government-run National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation of India (NAFED) and the entire process will be completed by December 15. The announcement came close on the heels of militants allegedly threatening some apple growers not to sell their produce in the market following the abrogation of J&K’s special status.