Why Kashmir’s saffron growers are feeling blue

livemint.com:

Mint that during the first half of the season he managed to harvest just 12 gm of saffron. “Three decades back, we would get around 2 kg of produce in a day, and during the whole season, the yield was more than a quintal," says Khan. With the saffron industry in the doldrums, his family is considering switching to other crops.

Khan, Reshi and other farmers blame climate change and the lack of irrigation facilities for hindering the growth of saffron, which is used in the food, pharmaceuticals, cosmetics and perfumery industries. Known to some as the ‘king of spices’, saffron is an expensive buy—the Kashmiri variety is sold at ₹2,000 to ₹2,200 per 10 gm. The overall industry, however, is small, and in the region of ₹300 crore, as saffron is not a crop with a huge output.

Reshi says that the saffron, which is known for its aroma and colour, requires intermittent rains between mid August and mid September for a good flush of flowers during the harvest season. Last year, however, the prolonged dry spell delayed the harvest. Saffron was cultivated on 5,707 hectares of land in 1997-98, as per government data.

That had shrunk to around 3,715 hectares till 2021-22. Aside from climate change, farmers and officials at the helm of affairs blame conventional farming, a poor and mismanaged market, adulteration, imports of the cheaper Iranian variety, and lack of interest in farming for the considerable loss of land under saffron cultivation, posing a threat to the future of the cash crop. But it is not just saffron that has been affected by the erratic weather.

Other crops such as apples, cherry, plum and strawberries, have also been affected. Apple is a key crop. Kashmir exports around 18 lakh tons of apples annually and produces