Cherry fails to blossom: Fearing more losses, growers in South Kashmir leave cherries to rot
Shopian: Fearing more losses, growers in south Kashmir are avaoding picking up cherry fruit from the trees. The growers are letting the crop to rot as the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic is inflicting huge losses for the growers.
Growers say that the part of the produce that was transported to outside markets was not able to fetch the cost involved in transporting or providing wages for the labourers.
“We avoided picking up cherries as the produce that we had already plucked and processed before forwarding it to various fruit mandies did not even fetch the cost that we incurred on transportation and paying the labour,” said Mohammad Shafi, a grower from Shopian.
“It is better to leave the produce on the trees and let it rot,” he said.
Another grower complained that he had to sell cherry boxes at a meager price of Rs 45 this year while the same box fetched him Rs 150 to 200 last year.
He said that this delicate and highly perishable crop costs a lot to the growers as they need labours for picking, packing, transportation besides durable boxes to transport it to outside mandies.
“The cost what we are getting is not enough to bear expense for picking, packing and transporting the produce. The crop also involves lot of efforts like maintaining the cherry trees, cost of fertilizers and pesticides as well,” said, Subzar Ahmad, a grower from Chotigam village of Shopian.
“The best we could have done is to leave the fruit on the trees itself and avoid investing any more on the crop,” he added.
He said that mandis are closed outside J&K and there is no demand for cherry this year due to which cherries are being sold for peanuts.
Notably, cherry had a bumper crop this year and the growers were quite upbeat about it.
“We were expecting better rates this year but the situation turned very repulsive due to the Covid-19 pandemic,” Ahmad added.
The growers said that restricted movement is equally playing spoilsport as cherry has a limited shelf life and this year cherries are rotting even before reaching their destination.
“The fruit Industry has suffered huge losses due to clampdown after August 05, later due to untimely snowfall, hailstorms and now the lockdown announced after Covid-19. But still the government hasn’t come forward and offered any support or help,” added another grower.
As per official figures 11280 metric tonnes of cherries were produced in 2017, 11789 metric tonnes in 2018 and 11,000 metric tonnes in 2019.
