By: Jahangeer Ganaie
Shopian/ Pulwama: Kashmir’s low-quality apple produce this year, besides incurring huge losses to farmers, has put the business of Controlled Atmosphere (CA) storages in big strain.
With most of the apple produce sold out to traders directly by farmers this year, CA store owners at Lassipora say that they are facing loses, as growers have not kept their produce in cold storages for future sale.
“The majority of the apple crop this year was affected by fungal diseases and growers preferred to sell their crop early and directly than to keep that in cold storage units,” a CA store owner at Lassipora said.
He said that the produce that was usually kept in CA stores has declined by around 40 percent this year.
He also said that due to decline in overall production this year and due to fungal diseases, the apple produce was not up to the mark at all.
“People preferred to sell the produce during initial harvesting as the quality of the crop was very poor. The growers thought it fit to sell off the produce rather than keep it in cold storage and reap the benefits of better sales later,” another CA storage owner said.
Notably, Kashmir has the capacity to store around two metric tonnes of fruit in about 30 CA storages units set up in various industrial estates and elsewhere.
An Assistant Manager at one of the cold storage units at Lassipora, Ansar Ul Haq said that their unit received 30% less produce compared to last year.
“It happened due to scab, less produce besides that last year growers suffered losses after they were unable to sell their produce kept in cold storage units due to covid-19,” he said.
Mehraj Ahmad, working as a manager at another such facility echoed the same views.
“Almost every unit received 30 to 40% less produce compared to last few years,” he said.
He said that given the disease and small size of the apple produce this year the growers thought it better to sell off the produce quite early.
Interestingly, officials within the Horticulture Department said that there is around 30 percent decline in production of apples as compared to last year.
They said that this year Kashmir has produced around 15 lakh metric tonnes of apple while as the valley recorded more than 23 lakh metric tonnes of apple produce last year.