PHERAN DIARIES – 22
By: Dr Sanjay Parva bindasparva@gmail.com
Highway closures on NH-44 have become the most dreaded word for Kashmir’s fruit growers. Each winter, and often during monsoon months, landslides along the highway at Ramban–Banihal section, the Nashri-Udhampur section and the Mughal Road choke the Valley’s lifeline. Thousands of apple, cherry, or pear-laden trucks stall for days. The result: shriveled fruit, mouldy cartons, collapsed prices, and losses running into hundreds of crores.
For decades, growers have asked: why must the fate of Kashmir’s horticulture hang on one vulnerable road? While the larger fixes – alternate tunnels, bypasses, railway freight – take years, a practical, medium-term solution is staring us in the face: Highway Agro Cold Hubs.
What are Highway Agro Cold Hubs?
Think of them as safe-parking stations for fruit – temperature-controlled warehouses with modern packhouse facilities, located every 40–60 km along the highway corridor from South Kashmir to Jammu. When the road shuts, fruit-laden trucks don’t have to rot on asphalt. They detour into the nearest hub, offload the cargo into cold rooms, and wait until the road reopens.
Where Should They Be Built?
The priority sites are clear: Qazigund, Anantnag, Awantipora, Sangam, Mir Bazar, and Banihal-side (after carefully identifying vulnerable points). Each hub should have a 200–500 MT capacity, scalable in modules. This placement means no truck is ever more than an hour away from a refuge point.
Key Features
• Multi-Commodity Storage: Apples, cherries, walnuts, plums, even vegetables, all in separate chambers with calibrated temperatures.
• Integrated Packhouses: Washing, grading, and carton strengthening so that halted consignments can be refreshed before re-loading.
• E-booking Platform: Growers, traders, and drivers use a mobile app to “park the crop” virtually – reserving slots, tracking storage conditions, and receiving alerts when roads reopen.
• Energy Security: Each hub equipped with dual-source power (grid + solar/diesel backup), plus insulated design to reduce load.
• Add-on Facilities: Driver dormitories, canteens, washrooms – turning waiting time into rest time.
The Payoff
1. Reduced Losses: Even a 48-hour storage buffer prevents fruit shrinkage, softening, and fungal spread. For cherries and plums, survival can mean the difference between exports and dumps.
2. Price Stability: With fruit preserved, distress sales at half-price in Delhi markets can be avoided. This protects not only farmers but also commission agents and traders.
3. Supply Chain Discipline: By linking to an e-booking system, the hubs create data on volumes moving each day, helping policymakers anticipate gluts and shortages.
4. Employment Boost: Each hub requires operators, graders, packers, drivers, IT managers – creating local jobs in logistics and food processing.
5. Climate Resilience: Cold-chain systems reduce the carbon footprint of repeated re-routing and wastage. Saved fruit equals saved resources.
Institutional Anchors
• Lead agency: J&K Horticultural Produce Marketing & Processing Corporation (JKHPMC), with Horticulture (Planning & Marketing) Department.
• Partners: Transport Department (reefer linkage), Industries & Commerce (logistics policy), PWD (access roads), Power Department (dedicated feeders).
• Private sector role: Cold storage firms, FPO-led cooperatives, and agritech startups for digital booking and monitoring.
Why Every 40–60 km?
The science is simple: once harvested, fruit begins to respire. Every additional hour of exposure to high temperature accelerates spoilage. By spacing hubs at 40–60 km intervals, trucks always have a reachable safety net within an hour’s drive. This matches international best practice in countries like Chile and Turkey, where mountain road closures are common but fruit rarely perishes thanks to dense cold-chain nodes. Our babus should read Chile and Turkey models to understand how these two nations, among a dozen others, deal with hostile issues stalling fruit logistic chains.
Let’s Be Blunt
Kashmir cannot afford to let its Rs 10,000+ crore horticulture economy be hostage to landslides and snow. Grand tunnels and expressways will take years. But Highway Agro Cold Hubs can be commissioned in 12–18 months with focused public–private investment.
Unless the government builds this grid, every closure at Ramban will continue to eat away not just cartons of apples but also the trust of growers, traders, and consumers.
It’s time to move beyond lamenting traffic jams to creating logistics resilience. The future of Kashmir’s fruit industry lies in concrete-and-steel hubs every 40–60 km – places where fruit can wait safely while roads heal themselves.
An author, a communications strategist, Dr Sanjay Parva was a debut contestant in 2024 Assembly elections