Season’s first snowfall wreaks havoc to apple orchards in Kashmir

‘Kashmir witnesses heavy snowfall in November, second time in a decade’

5 Dariya News

Srinagar 08-Nov-2019

The season’s first snowfall on Thursday wreaked havoc to apple orchards in Kashmir by causing widespread damage to the apple trees and the crop as well.The administration  was caught napping over the weather predictions without issuing any severe weather advisory to the horticulturalists in the Valley. According to wire service—Kashmir News  Observer (KNO), the farmers have hardly pruned roughly some 20 percent of their orchards, while as, maximum trees were yet to be pruned.The farmers in south Kashmir said  that the plucking of apple crop got delayed this season due to the prevailing situation post abrogation of Article 370 in J&K and splitting it into two union territories. This was the  second snowfall in the month of November in Kashmir in last one decade, which caused widespread damage to the mainstay of the Valley economy – horticulture.Reports from  several parts of Kashmir Valley said that the massive snowfall today has caused widespread damage to the apple trees.Orchardist Imran Nabi Dar, 45, called the snowfall “a  catastrophe” and said he had lost over 100 trees at in Shopian village on the first day of snowfall. 

“Trees were yet to shed leaves, which became a reason that snowflakes remain accumulating on tree branches- which led their breaking,” he said.This snowfall has wreaked  havoc in the entire south Kashmir, thus, huge loses to the farmers. “A tree takes two decades to mature and the snowfall has ruined our hard work of years,’’ Gowhar Abdullah,  another farmers from Pulwama told KNO.An official in the J&K horticulture department said the department was still assessing the damages as the snowfall was going on from last  mod night. An estimated 45 lakh out of Kashmir’s ninety lakh people are believed to be directly or indirectly dependent on horticulture, which has an annual turnover of Rs 8,000  to 10,000 crore.The snowfall plunged Kashmir into darkness, forced closure of the lifeline Srinagar-Jammu national highway, Mughal road and disrupted air traffic besides  damaging orchards.In Srinagar city, a fire and emergency team was seen cutting tree branches at several places. A fire and emergency vehicle with huge elevator was put at  Zero Bridge, Rajbagh to prune the branches of trees- including Chinar trees, which were posing threat to the public lives.(KNO)