DM Monitoring
Shopian: With apple blooms sprouting, growers are worried that they may face huge economic losses due to disruptions in the supply chain due to the continued nationwide lockdown to contain the spread of the coronavirus, which has been extended until May 3.
Even as they spray pesticide and fertilizer in their orchards, a considerable number of growers are worried. Many of them are yet to sell their produce from the last year, held in cold storage. They are neither able to send their produce to different mandis across the country nor are there any buyers due to the intense lockdown.
Ghulam Mohammad, a grower from the district is busy spraying the second round of pesticides in his orchard. He is among hundreds of growers who stored their produce from the last harvesting season, storing around 600 boxes. In normal circumstances, he says he would have sold them by now. But he is a worried man now. “How will I pay for the fertilizer and pesticide that I have used if I am not able to sell the fruit?” he asks.
He has made frantic calls to other growers, enquiring if they have sold their produce but has found that they are facing the same fate.
For the sector, which was already facing the economic consequences of the Centre’s decision to impose a lockdown after the dilution of Article 370, the threat of the novel coronavirus pandemic coinciding with the spring season has come as a double whammy.
Orchardists in the region fear these developments will have serious repercussions for the Valley’s economy. Although the authorities have eased restrictions for the operators of cold storages, in the absence of buyers and trucks to carry the produce to other stations, farmers are left in limbo.
