Himachal predicts all-time high cherry production

Express News Service Tags : season, less rain, no hailstorm the reason Posted: Monday , Apr 26, 2010 at 2319 hrs Shimla:

Figure set to touch a record 900 tonnes; less rain, no hailstorm the reason, say experts

Cherry production in the state is likely to touch an all-time high in the current season and the estimates project that it will be double the quantity produced last year.

Due to favourable weather conditions during March and April, in the absence of hailstorms that used to badly hit the crop earlier, the production is set to touch a record 900-tonne mark. While 25 per cent of the harvest is already out, the season is set to continue till July 15.

“This year is set to get a bumper cherry crop. Orchardists in the apple belt of Kotgarh and Narkanda, who have of late shifted to large-scale cherry production, are likely to be the biggest beneficiaries,” said horticulture department research officer Daulat Ram.

The previous year’s cherry production was 419 tonnes and the figure was 698 tonnes in 2007-08.

Vikram Rawat, an orchardist in Chindi area of Karsog in Mandi district, said: “Several orchardists in Karsog have already started to reap harvests from their rejuvenated orchards. The weather has come as a boon for them.”

Rawat, however, said since the number of people experimenting with cherries is not very high in Karsog, they were facing problems in marketing the produce.

He said the sweet varieties grown in the area did not have a long shelf life. “Many people have, therefore, started shifting to tart varieties, which have a longer shelf life and the produce can wait for some time to be marketed,” sad Rawat.

The tart varieties are, however, yet to catch up with the popularity of sweet varieties that are more liked by Indian consumers.

The higher reaches of Shimla, Kullu, Mandi, Chamba, Kinnaur and Lahaul-Spiti have now emerged ideal for the cultivation of cherry.

The horticulture department’sestimates say at least 10,000 small and medium-scale farmers in the state have grown cherries on approximately 405 hectares as an alternative crop.

In the traditional apple belt of Shimla district, too, many orchardists have shifted to cherry.

Ramdass Chauhan, an orchardist at Ekantbadi near Matiyana, said: “With cherry, we do not have much problem meeting the required chilling hours, unlike apple. This year, in the absence of required quantity of snowfall, we were skeptical about apple production, but it spelled boon for cherry.”

“As compared to apple that requires 1,200 to 1,600 hours of chilling till March, before flowering, cherry requires less than 700 chilling hours. Of late, the cherry prices have also turned out to be more attractive, selling at Rs 100 to 120 per kg, even with a bumper crop,” said S P Bhardwaj, senior horticulture scientist at the Y S Parmar Horticulture University in Solan.

St Mary Church and the Gorton Mission School Kotgarh

Sunday, January 3, 2010

Legacy to cherish The CMS church in Kotgarh stands as a symbol of the early missionary work in Himachal Pradesh. Though the town does not reflect strong Christian characteristics, the legacy is depicted in the church and the school, says Manpreet Kaur

KOTGARH, a small hamlet in the state of Himachal Pradesh, is around 10 km from Narkanda. Surrounded by the Himalayas, the town is famous for its apples, but a less known fact is that Kotgarh was one of the earliest mission stations of North India, the history of which is gathering dust in the mission archives. A visit to the place rekindled my interest on this neglected topic.

The compound of the missionary school (right); and the CMS church, which stands out for its Gothic architecture

Kotgarh, in the 19th century, was a part of the province of Punjab. Going back to the early establishments of mission centres, the Presbyterians from America led by Rev John C. Lowrie were among the early missions to establish their headquarters in Punjab at Ludhiana in 1834. But after a decade in 1844, it was Church Missionary Society (CMS) from England that opened its centre at Kotgarh. It became a mission station along with Simla, Kangra and Dharamsala. Kotgarh was ideally situated in terms of Christianisation.

To comment on the impact it would have, Robert Clarke, a pioneer of CMS — when he came to Kotgarh after almost 40 years of its establishment — called it as a mission on a hill "to give light to the whole country between China and the plains."

Kotgarh grew with references like these, and by the early 20^th century, the field work as described by Rev HFT Beutel comprised an area of about 2000 sq miles. In 1911, there were around seven male native Christian agents.

Kotgarh was not alien to the British establishment at the time of the ecclesiastical invasion. It had already become a station of the British army during the 1814-1816 Gorkha war. A two-storey building was erected to serve as British officers’ mess. In the coming years, the British army withdrew from Kotgarh. Some time later the missionary spirit took root. CMS at Kotgarh worked in close connection with the Berlin Ladies’ Society. Unfortunately, I couldn’t trace any literature on the latter society with regard to their activity in Kotgarh.

What draws attention while one visits the place is a church that stands in the middle of the town. Built in 1872, the CMS church is near the Army mess. Set in the rugged mountainous site, it stands out as an example of the Gothic architecture. The church, a not-so-tall building, has an apse and a tower bell. The front window has a painting of Christ. The exterior is a combination of austerity and simplicity. It was used for daily morning and evening services.

The church — now filled with mature shrubs and apple trees in its backyard — enhances the settings of what is one of the historic buildings of early mission work. Along side the church, a school was opened, and was named after Gorton, a distinguished servant in Simla. Later, it came under the mission control. The school grew gradually, and in 1886 it could boast of a substantial figure of students studying here — 13 boys and two girls.

Interestingly, some medical work was carried at Kotgarh, too. A hospital that comprised only four beds was highly beneficial to the natives and the mission societies alike. Though the hospital was not a missionary enterprise, the latter through its "care and cure" policy spread the message of gospel to the patients. They believed it would facilitate conversions .The mission reports do throw light on incidents that showed interest of the indigenous population towards Christianity.

For instance, a Brahmin, who brought his son for treatment, expressed a desire to learn about Christ. Similarly, a young man in government service with a small salary regularly gave one Re 1 a month as a thank offering for the benefit derived at the mission school. Such descriptions were pronounced but baptism was rare. There are no figures available that tell the exact statistics of the indigenous Christians of that time.

Kotgarh, with its picturesque location, soon became a summer retreat for the missionaries in the plains. Books written during the early 19^th century have travelling experiences of missionaries on ponies. Dr Brown of Women’s Christian Medical College and Hospital from Ludhiana was a regular visitor who spent her early summer holidays here. A stay at Kotgarh for her meant time for learning a language like Urdu. Despite the Christian credentials of the place, Kotgarh witnessed a partial process in the spread of Christianity.

Towards the later decades of the 20th century, there was little impetus of mission work here. From this standpoint, ironically, when Samuel Stokes settled in this part of the country, he found his missionary image "unsatisfactory," and became a Hindu to establish a rapport with Indians.

Presently, Kotgarh does not reflect strong Christian characteristics. However, the legacy of the missionaries is depicted in the domain of the church and the school.

The Worm Has Turned

Up & Away (Source :Outlook Magazine | Jun 08, 2009)

Climate change has severely affected Himachal Pradesh's famous Thanedar-Kotgarh apple belt and other mid-altitude apple-growing areas

This year's apple crop is expected to be 30-50% less, due to rising temperatures, lack of snowfall and rain

Studies have established that from 1973-1990 to 2000-2007, average winter temperatures have gone up by 3 degrees centigrade and snowfall has decreased from 190 cm to 95 cm

Apple farmers are now turning to mangoes, pomegranate, flowers

Apple cultivation is now shifting to the higher altitudes of Lahaul-Spiti and Kinnaur districts, though arable land there is limited
***

"The Golden Delicious is a very fine apple indeed and I am working to make Kotgarh the headquarter of this fruit in India..."

—Excerpt from a letter from Satyanand Stokes to his mother in the US in 1930

"We haven't had a white Christmas in the Shimla hills for quite a few years now. And for the last six months, not a flake of snow has fallen in these parts," says a despondent Prakash Thakur in Himachal Pradesh's famed apple-producing belt of Kotgarh. It has taken a while for people here to realise that the climate is changing, the hills are warming up like never before. The days of heavy snowfall are all but gone, except in the higher reaches, and this has resulted in a slow shift of Himachal Pradesh's apple belt to even higher altitudes.

Himachal Pradesh's apple boom is credited to Satyanand Stokes, an American missionary (he later converted to Hinduism) who first introduced high-quality apples in the state's mid-altitude hills in the 1920s. From a small orchard in the Thanedar-Kotgarh belt, Stokes demonstrated how high-quality apples could be produced at altitudes of 4,000-6,000 feet. Since then, Himachal Pradesh has been synonymous with apples, producing Rs 1,500 crore worth of apples each year. Stokes's daughter-in-law, Vidya Stokes, a former minister of the state, now manages most of the family's orchards.

"The last few years have been quite bad and people have slowly begun to cultivate other fruit," she told Outlook. "But climate change has hit us the hardest this year. I expect production below 6,000 feet to be down almost 50 per cent because our orchards have had virtually no moisture this year."

So what really is happening?

At the Y.S. Parmar University of Horticulture & Forestry near Solan, Dr K.S. Verma and his team of scientists have been studying changing climate patterns in Himachal Pradesh over the last 40 years. They took the average temperatures from 1973-90 and called it the baseline. "After comparing temperatures from 2000-2007 with the baseline, we found that in the mid-hills, winter temperatures have increased between 2.5 to three degrees centigrade. And with each degree of increase, the apple belt shifts upward by about 300 metres," says Dr Verma. As for snowfall, which provides the vital chilling essential for apple cultivation, it's down from 190 cm during the baseline years to 95 cm now. And while it used to snow in the mid-hills from November to April, now, snowfall is confined to January-February and only above 6,000 feet. This deprives the crop of sufficient moisture and chilling hours.
"This year has hit us the worst. Production below 6,000 feet is likely to go down by almost 50 per cent." Vidya Stokes, Ex-minister, cultivator


Ideally, apple trees require temperatures below 7 degrees C for at least 1,500 hours during the growing season to yield a good crop. "If this trend continues, we might see apples vanishing from Himachal Pradesh, unless intervention in the form of low-altitude varieties of apples is made," Verma says.

Meanwhile, farmers are trying—as best as they can—to adapt to climate change. The best apples from Himachal now come from the high-altitude districts of Kinnaur and Lahaul-Spiti At altitudes of 8,000-9,000 feet, where nothing much grew some years ago, apple cultivation is transforming the socio-economic profile of the tribal residents. Many of them used to live a hardscrabble existence, but things are now changing for them. Tsering, a marginal farmer in Kaza in Lahaul-Spiti, says, "Everyone who has any land at all is now planting apple trees. The extremely cold climate is most conducive to apples, and our apples fetch a good price in the markets of Delhi and Shimla because they have longer shelf life."

Meanwhile, in the traditional apple-growing areas of Kotgarh, Jubbal, Kullu and Kotkhai, where the fruit has brought unprecedented prosperity to the people over the last 50 years, there is a measure of envy at the shift in prosperity to the high-altitude tribal belt. "They are today where we were 30 years ago. They are the new apple kings—extremely prosperous, with huge properties in Shimla and Chandigarh," says Chet Ram Chauhan of Pamlai village, who has pulled out his son from a job in Shimla to help him in the orchards. "Earlier, we did not need to put in much effort for a good crop. A good snow cover ensured that our orchards got ample moisture and chilling through the slow melting of snow. But now, with little rain and even less snow, we are frantically trying to irrigate our orchards artificially, and anyone who can afford it is digging ponds to store rainwater," Chauhan says.

At the bottom of the hill is Samathla village (altitude 4,000 feet) where Gopal Mehta has cut down his apple orchards and is now growing mangoes on the terraced fields. He has another orchard above 6,000 feet where he still has apples, but even there, worried about being overtaken by bad news, he's replacing apple trees with cherries. Most apple orchards below 4,500 feet, where production has fallen drastically in the last few years, are being replaced by apricots, peaches, pomegranate and, in places like Bajaura in Kullu, with vegetables and flowers.

Warmer temperatures also mean more pests and a heavy dose of pesticide for the crop. This increases input costs, besides lowering soil fertility. As Verma points out, "Production is also coming down because increased use of pesticide is killing bees and insects so essential for pollination of apple blossom." But these problems are virtually non-existent in the cold heights. Apples from here come late in October and November, are virtually free of pesticides, and are of good quality. Since it is a cold desert landscape, farmers manage to provide irrigation from channels carrying snow melt from even higher reaches. But though this provides an opportunity for exploitation of newer areas, the fact is that the high altitudes have very little arable soil and areas that can be brought under cultivation are limited.

Apple-growing in Himachal Pradesh is certainly in a churn. The next few years will see more high-altitude areas coming under apple cultivation. But what will happen once the mountain tops, too, become too warm?