In Ganderbal, cherry-picking season turns bitter

Freshly harvested cherries lie heaped on a sheet of yellow tarpaulin on which brothers Abdul Salam Khan and Nasrullah Khan, both in their sixties, sit cross-legged, grading and sorting the fruit with practiced care. Sunlight glints off the waterproof fabric, lighting up their weathered faces, drawn with fatigue now as a difficult season winds down.

Their orchard is tiny, barely a quarter of an acre, located in Soraf Raw village of central Kashmir’s Ganderbal district.

“It has been tough this year,” says Abdul Salam, on a bright June morning. “We’ve been doing this for over 40 years, but I’ve never seen a season like this one. The weather and the lack of tourists have together hit us hard,” adds the 65-year-old.

Earlier this year, the Khan brothers, who belong to the Pashtun community, leased two acres of cherry orchards spread across different locations in Soraf Raw. The village is 49 kilometres north of Srinagar, a 35 km drive from their home in Gotli Bagh.

Family members and hired labourers worked together on the harvest, but after months of labour, buyers are scarce.

The Kashmir valley produces 23,000 metric tonnes of cherries annually, according to Jammu & Kashmir’s Department of Horticulture. Ganderbal alone accounts for about 9,000 metric tonnes – 39 per cent of the total production. Roughly 5,000 farmers in Ganderbal district depend on the crop for their livelihood.

Soraf Raw, a picturesque village nestled beside the Sindh River, is known for its high-altitude cherry orchards. Due to its cooler temperatures, cherries here ripen later than in other areas, making it the final harvest of the season.

In the months of May and June, dozens of makeshift stalls line either side of the main road leading into Soraf Raw, selling freshly harvested cherries and plums. This year, the stalls saw only a trickle of visitors.

“We took contracts for 10 cherry orchards this season, each about 2 to 3 kanals (a kanal is 0.125 acres, each leased orchard thus about a quarter or a third of an acre), and paid 30,000 rupees for each. The trees were full of blossoms, and we expected a good harvest,” Abdul Salam says. Instead, the family is staring at losses of Rs. 20,000 per orchard, a setback of Rs. 2 lakh in total. “The biggest worry is whether we’ll even recover the money we spent.”

This year’s downturn in horticulture is driven by overlapping crises.

Following the April 2025 Pahalgam terror attack that claimed 26 lives, tourism, the backbone of Jammu & Kashmir’s economy, remains severely hit.

“Tourists usually make up 70 per cent of our business. Without them, the season feels dead,” says Abdul Salam.

This season’s losses will be the latest in a string of challenges. “For the past four years, untimely rainfall and hailstorms have damaged our crops right on the trees,” says Abdul Salam quietly.

Cherry orchards in Kashmir are typically leased out to contractors like the Khans, who may enjoy the entire profit from the harvest in a good year but must bear the entire loss in a year like the current one. “We rely on the flowers to estimate the yield, but there’s always a risk,” Abdul Salam adds.

The cherry crop is a time-sensitive one. The trees fruit in April and May. Rain and unexpected hail in these months damaged much of the crop this year. Cherries are a delicate fruit, and the harsh weather left visible stains on the fruit. Fruit with stains fetch nothing in the market, say farmers in Ganderbal.

Across Kashmir’s horticulture sector, 2025 was a punishing year. In September, which is apple-picking season in Kashmir, heavy rains swamped orchards and paddy fields in Pulwama, Shopian and Baramulla caused significant losses, blocking roads and halting transport. Trucks remained stranded for days, forcing growers to find alternative – and costly – routes.

Cherry farmers, already constrained by the fruit’s short shelf-life, suffered the most. A box that used to sell for Rs. 200 was available for Rs. 60 to Rs. 80 in June 2025. “That’s not even half of what we spent on fertiliser and insecticide spraying,” says Abdul Salam. “Most of our fruit is sitting unsold in boxes, and within a few days, they will spoil.”

Along the road from Ganderbal to Sonmarg, a popular tourist destination, cherry stalls are stacked with unsold boxes.

“I used to sell 30-40 boxes of fresh cherries in a day, but since the Pahalgam incident, I barely sell 5-10 boxes, that too only to local customers,” says 30-year-old Akthar Khan. “There are no tourists in the Valley. Why would anyone want to visit at the cost of their life?”

Tourist arrivals in Jammu & Kashmir reached a record 2.36 crore in 2024, according to the government.

Akthar, a construction worker from Wail village in Ganderbal, supports a family of four—his wife, a two-year-old son, and a nine-year-old daughter. During the cherry harvest season in May and June, he also sells cherries at roadside stalls in the Wossan area of Ganderbal district.

Akthar is trying to avoid returning to his usual construction work this season. “I had ordered 4,000 boxes of cherries from a contractor. Now, I am bound to take them whether I can sell them or not,” he says. Fortunately, the contractor, a middleman between farmers and fruit-sellers, actually helped him offload the 4,000 boxes in the wholesale markets of Srinagar. “Had he not been supportive, I would have incurred a debt of several lakh rupees,” Akthar says.

Like Akthar, all along the 50-km route from Ganderbal to Sonmarg, dozens of stall owners wait in hope of customers.

Everyone at these stalls acknowledges that the decline in tourist arrivals has hit business hard. The only people in the trade who remain unaffected are the orchard owners who sell their crop in advance, when the trees blossom.

Besides lease rent and orchard maintenance, growers incur labour costs irrespective of sales. “We pay our labourers 600 rupees a day, and even though the harvest is slower this year, I still have to pay them in full,” Abdul Salam says. “If the fruit is healthy, one worker can pick up to 10 boxes a day. Once damaged, it's a struggle to harvest the fruit. Now, we’re lucky if we get five boxes a day.”

The Khan brothers grow multiple varieties of cherries, including Awal Number (Guigne Poupera Prece), Double (Bigarreau Napoleon), Makhmali (Guigne Noir Hative), and Misri (Bigarreau Noir Grossa). “Misri is the only variety we can send outside because it has a longer shelf life. The rest, we have to sell locally,” Abdul Salam adds.

The Khans have almost no control over the price they receive, for it is the traders in the mandi (wholesale market) who set the rates. “We send the cherries in boxes, and once they reach the mandi, it’s up to the traders to decide the price based on market conditions and the fruit's quality,” says Abdul Salam. “We don’t have a say in it.”

Despite the setbacks, he remains resolute. “This business has never been easy. This year, everything has gone wrong at once –the weather, the market, and the lack of tourists. But we keep working because this is our livelihood, and it’s all we know.”

This story is published under the PARI Senior Fellowship 2025.