Opinion | Kashmir’s Fruit Farmers Battle a Changing Climate

“Farmers cannot fight a changing climate alone. Without affordable protection, crop insurance, and timely support, resilience becomes an impossible burden.”

Unseasonal storms, hail, and shifting rainfall patterns are threatening the livelihoods of thousands of apple and cherry growers across the Kashmir Valley. What was once an occasional misfortune has become an almost yearly nightmare, and the people who depend on these orchards are running out of ways to cope?In Jammu and Kashmir, and especially in the Kashmir Valley, fruit farming is facing a serious and worsening crisis because of changing weather. The valley produces more than two million tonnes of apples every year, alongside cherries, pears, peaches, almonds, walnuts, and grapes. When the weather turns bad, it does not just hurt a handful of growers, it touches nearly every household connected to the land.Farmers describe a shift they have watched unfold over the years. Hailstorms that once struck occasionally now arrive almost every season, sometimes two or three times, hammering the same villages before they have even recovered from the last blow.”We used to fear one bad storm a season,” said one grower from Shopian. “Now we fear every cloud that gathers.”

This year alone, hailstorms damaged orchards across Shopian, Kulgam, Pulwama, Bandipora, Baramulla, Kupwara, and Tral. Many farmers say it was the worst destruction they have ever witnessed. A report by NITI Aayog found that Jammu and Kashmir recorded almost 2,863 extreme weather events, including heavy rain, floods, heat waves, and storms, between 2010 and 2022. That number tells its own story. This is not simply bad luck striking again and again. It is a pattern. Scientists point to something called Western Disturbances, weather systems that travel from the Mediterranean Sea across the western Himalayas, particularly during spring. When these systems collide with the warm, moist air already sitting in the valley, they generate powerful storms capable of producing hail. Kashmir’s geography makes this worse. Surrounded by mountains and shaped almost like a bowl, the valley traps and intensifies these storms, so one village can be devastated while a neighbouring one stays untouched.

Climate change adds another layer of danger. Warmer temperatures create unstable air, so instead of rain falling evenly through the season, it now arrives in short, violent bursts. Dust and pollution in the atmosphere play a quiet but destructive role too, delaying the formation of raindrops and allowing clouds to grow taller and more powerful before releasing their fury as hail.It is not only hailstorms causing harm. Unseasonal rain and sudden frost are becoming common, tied to broader shifts across the region, such as reduced snowfall at lower elevations, snow melting earlier than usual, shrinking glaciers, and longer dry spells between storms. Together, these changes suggest something larger than isolated bad weather. The entire climate pattern of the region appears to be shifting.

For farmers, the cruelest part of this crisis is timing. Hailstorms and unseasonal rain increasingly strike in April, May, and early June, exactly when apple, cherry, and pear trees are flowering and beginning to set fruit. This is the most fragile stage of the entire growing cycle.A hailstorm lasting only twenty or thirty minutes during this window can wipe out almost an entire year’s crop. Some farmers report losing up to eighty percent of their blossoms in a single storm. Frost is equally merciless. If it arrives after the flowers have opened, it kills them outright, and unlike vegetables, fruit trees cannot bloom a second time in the same season. That loss becomes permanent for the year.”One storm and everything we waited for all year is gone in minutes,” said a fruit grower in Kulgam. “There is no second chance once the blossoms fall.”The damage rarely stops at lost fruit. Hail can snap branches, wound the bark, and weaken the tree itself, meaning reduced harvests for several years afterward, not just the season of the storm. In 2023, hailstorms and unseasonal rain destroyed nearly half of Kashmir’s cherry crop. In 2025, floods and transport disruptions cost the apple industry close to six hundred to seven hundred crore rupees.

What makes this crisis especially painful is who bears the burden. Almost ninety percent of fruit growers in the region are small or marginal farmers, meaning their orchard is essentially their only source of income. Most have no savings and no backup plan when a storm wipes out their crop, and the loss often pushes them straight into debt.Because of this, farmer groups across the valley have repeatedly called on the government for proper crop insurance and a stronger market support system, so families are not left to absorb total losses with no assistance at all.Some growers are trying to adapt on their own. Many have started moving away from traditional orchards toward newer, high density orchards that use imported plant varieties and can be covered with protective nets to reduce hail damage. This method was originally introduced to boost fruit yield, but many farmers now say protection from the weather is their main reason for adopting it.”The nets are not cheap, but losing everything is far more expensive,” one farmer explained.That, however, points to a growing divide. These modern methods are costly, and many small farmers simply cannot afford them. As a result, wealthier growers gain a layer of protection while poorer families remain fully exposed to whatever the sky brings.

What is unfolding in Jammu and Kashmir makes clear that the region’s weather is genuinely changing, not experiencing a passing rough patch. Without stronger support in the form of insurance, financial assistance, and affordable protective methods, thousands of farming families may continue to face devastating losses year after year. At stake is not only their income, but the survival of an entire fruit farming tradition that has shaped the identity and economy of the valley for generations.

ZAHIDA PARVEEN zahidaparveen@gmail.com