Crom Rot disease affects Saffron cultivation

Farmers in doldrums, Govt turns blind eye
S.N. HUSSAIN
Kishtwar: The prevailing drought like conditions in mountainous Kishtwar district has hit the Saffron cultivators most, who are finding themselves at the cross roads.
The government also admitted the sudden fall in the saffron cultivation in the region and has shifted the blame on the prevailing weather conditions and ‘Crom rot’ disease, which has spread in the saffron cultivated areas.
Minister for Agriculture Ghulam Hassan Mir, in reply to a question of MLA Kishtwar Sajad Ahmed Kichloo, recently told the Legislative Assembly that government was taking steps to improve the saffron cultivation in the district. He said that the fall in the saffron cultivation was due to the drought like situation and Crom Rot disease.
Crom rot is a disease which affects many different types of plants. Plants afflicted with this disease experience rot around their stems, in the area where the stem joins the root. Typically, crown rot is fatal, although it can be treated in some cases if a gardener is willing to put in some extensive efforts. As with many other plant diseases, prevention is easier than curing.
The farmers were already suffering in the absence of a transparent marketing structure and the lack of state support for prices means a good saffron crop would not necessarily translate into cash in the farmers’ pockets.
Few outside Kishtwar even know the valley is home to a major saffron industry. Unlike their better-known counterparts in the Kashmir valley’s Pampore area, the Kishtwar saffron growers do not figure either in the Jammu and Kashmir Government tourism brochures or the minds of the Srinagar-based bureaucrats. Nonetheless, the business has, over the decades, thrived and grown. While Pampore supplies wholesale markets in New Delhi, Kishtwar feeds Punjab’s saffron hub, Amritsar.
Official neglect has hit farmers’ interests hard. Much of the wholesale trade out of Kishtwar is controlled by three large dealers who, farmers say, function as a price-fixing cartel.
Sold at upwards of Rs. 430 for 10 grams in Amritsar, saffron fetches the Kishtwar farmers between Rs. 350 and 400, depending on the quality. Besides, the buyers insist on purchasing in the traditional Tola measures, rather than by the gram. Thus, farmers sell 11.7 grams of saffron for the price of 10 grams, giving dealers another layer of profit.
While 1.7 grams may not seem a huge amount, even small quantities of saffron are precious. Few farmers can boast of more than an acre and a half of land and the yields are highly variable.
Saffron farming is a tough business. Saffron bulbs are planted once every four years. When the bulbs flower, the stamens have to be picked by hand. Every four years, the bulbs have to be removed from the soil, dried, and transplanted to new fields. For the past four years, poor rainfall has led to declining yields and many bulbs have been destroyed by the dryness.
The farmers’ hardship was partly mitigated by the fact that uses have been discovered for damaged bulbs and the plant’s blue flowers in herbal cosmetic and medicinal products. But producers fear that the benefits of a good rainfall will be undone by the absence of a government-run price support mechanism.
State disinterest is tragic since encouraging high-value crops such as saffron could transfigure the fortunes of the economically backward Kishtwar.
The region also produces wild Gucchi, or morels, which retail for over Rs. 1,000 a kg in Jammu markets. State intervention could have helped develop methods to commercially cultivate morels in the region’s poorest high-altitude hamlets. Vegetables grown in Doda district, of which Kishtwar is a part, are popular in Jammu markets along with the region’s speciality, Rajma beans. Again, the absence of a storage and marketing mechanism has meant farmers rarely get the prices they deserve.