As India’s apple imports double to 303,245 tons in 2021; Kashmir farmers weigh options

Srinagar, Feb 18: India’s imports of  apple fruit have risen to 303,245 tonnes during the nine month period of April-December of 2021, which is double than the imports of entire 2020.

According to the latest imports data released by the Commerce Ministry  accessed by Ziraat Times, during the corresponding April-December 2020 period, the country had imported only 139,486 tonnes of apples.

According to the available data, most of the apple imports have come from Iran and Turkey, with the percentage of US apples going down due to the retaliatory import duty of 20% that India imposed on American apples in 2019.

Leading Mumbai-based apple importers Ziraat Times spoke to cite another reason for growing Iranian apple imports – lower procurement costs compared to American apples which are now much costlier due to the steep rise in freight costs since 2019.

The rise in low cost apple imports has another implication to it: the demand for homegrown apples from Kashmir,  Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand has gone down in the last few months.

According to Ministry of Commerce data, during fiscal year 2020, India’s total apple production was 2.7 million metric tons, while the demand was much higher than that. Kashmir accounts for the bulk of the overall production in the country. According to the Horticulture Department, Kashmir recorded 20.35 lac MTs fruit production in 2020-21, out of which apple production is about 80-90% of the total production.

As lower cost apples continue to flood the country’s markets, apple farmers in Kashmir and Himachal Pradesh worry for the growing gap between their production and the sale costs.

This situation has particularly hit the farmers who have made significant investment in replacing their traditional apple farms with high density farms, often by raising loans from banks.

Many Kashmir and Himachal farmers complain that with the prices they fetch for their apples these days, they are barely able to recover their production  costs.

“We ventured  into high density apple farming assuming a certain market demand and price stability. We are now confused. On the one hand we are encouraged by government departments to enhance production and quality but on the other hand when we have raised both, now cheaper imports have flooded the markets”, observes Nadeem Ahmed, an MBA holder who ventured into high density apple farming in 2018 after obtaining a bank finance.

Farmers also worry that this situation also puts their loan repayment plan off balance.

The sudden emegence of low cost apple imports have also made the owners of cold storages nervous. With significant investment and bank finance exposure, the owners of cold storages in Kashmir as well as Himachal Pradesh are anxious about the lower appetite among apple growers to store their apples in  old stores due to the market volatility.

“This situation really makes us nervous. If farmers do not get adequate profits, they would be very reluctant to store their apples with us because it incurs an additional cost for them”, a leading cold storage unit holder told Ziraat Times.

With the general inflationary trend in the market, production  costs for apples in Kashmir has shot up by at least 30% in the last 3 three years, farmers argue. Significantly, several entrepreneurs in Kashmir, who were planning to venture into high density apple farming, have put their plans on hold.

“Whether it is the labour costs or the cost of agro chemicals, packaging materials, fertilisers, transportation, storage just everything has gone up. In this situation, how can we break even if apples with much lower costs flood the markets?”, Ram Kishan a Himachal farmers told Ziraat Times.

In 2021, a delegation of Himachal Pradesh & Uttrakhand Fruit Growers Associations visited Jammu & Kashmir between March 3-6 and aim to devise a joint strategy with their counterparts in Kashmir  regarding the growing low cost imports. However, despite several representations to the concerned ministries, no remedial actions have come up so far.