Srinagar, Oct 30: There is good news for orchardists and apple growers, the Horticulture Department Kashmir is planning to enhance cold storage facilities from 2.06 lakh MT to 5 lakh MT in the coming years aimed to counter the post-harvest losses and financial difficulties for apple growers.
Over the years the department has been working to improve the cold storage facilities that are aimed to felicitate the farmers and save the fruit crop to gain good profit in the market.
Subject Matter Specialist, Directorate of Horticulture Kashmir, Mohd Amin Bhat said the department is planning to add more cold storage facilities in the valley for the benefit of the growers.
“We will improve it from 2.06 lakh MT to 5 lakh MT in the coming years. It is expected to improve further capacity storage which would be a major boost for the farmers,” he said.
Interestingly, the Subject Matter Specialist said the horticulture department has extended the cold storage facilities from 1.8 lakh mt in 2022 to 2.06 lakh metric tonnes this year (2023). He said that the number of cold storage facilities has been improved from 42 in 2022 to 44 this year.
He said that the department is more focused on the extension of cold storage facilities. “By providing more cold storage facilities, our apple produce could be stored for more months, which will help get a good price in the market,” Bhat said.
Bhat said that the department plans to improve cold storage facilities to store apples in huge quantities. “Kashmir produces apples in bulk. In case of a decrease in rates farmers need to store apples for months. The increase to 5 lakh mt cold storage facilities will ease farmers,” he said.
He said that as the high density apple would increase it would require more cold storage facilities as in high density there is more than 80 percent of fruit A-Grade.
“These days, whatever the CS stores are being constructed, each store has 2,000 to 5,000 MT capacity. Now, we are also going to set up the cold storage facilities in north Kashmir as most of the cold storage facilities are located in Pulwama and Shopian districts,” he said.
Officials also said that the UT government, under the Prime Minister’s Development Package (PMDP), has taken several steps to construct cold storage facilities in both the public and private sectors, with priority given to apple-producing regions.
“To incentivize entrepreneurs, they are offered a reward of Rs 10,000 per metric ton of cold storage space under the MIDH and PMDP schemes. Moreover, under the UT Capex program, a top-up incentive of Rs 14,520 per metric ton of cold storage space is provided for activities that are not covered under central schemes by the beneficiary,” they said.
Additionally, the beneficiary can take advantage of interest subvention under the Agriculture Infrastructure Fund or Industrial Development Scheme.
Annually Kashmir produces over 20 lakh mt of apple and in some years touches 25 lakh mt. The 2017 Economic Survey in J&K had said that half of Kashmir’s population is directly or indirectly dependent on the apple industry and over 3.5 lakh hectares are under apple cultivation.
