Kashmir Wants To Go Organic Like Sikkim. But Who’s Listening?

(MENAFN- Kashmir Observer)

Representational photo

By Fiza Masoodi

The sun was still climbing over the ridges of Gurez when I stepped onto a potato field, soft with dew and dark with life. A farmer knelt beside me, his fingers moving through the soil like someone reading an old, familiar story. He didn’t say much, but his silence carried the same confidence I’d once heard in the voice of Nazir Ahmad Gurezi, a senior lawmaker who stood here in 2017 and declared that Gurez could be Kashmir’s organic capital.

“This place has everything it needs,” Nazir had said then. And he wasn’t wrong.

There’s something unspoiled about Gurez. The land is high, the air is sharp, and the soil-untouched by years of chemicals-is ready. Nazir’s dream was to grow clean food here: peas, potatoes, and promise.

And now, across Kashmir, from Pulwama’s modest plots to the apple-heavy orchards of Baramulla, that dream is beginning to stir.

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But dreaming is easy. Building takes more. And that is where, the far northeast Sikkim is showing the way.

In 2003, Pawan Kumar Chamling, then chief minister, did something few politicians ever dare. He banned chemical pesticides. Slowly, methodically, Sikkim walked toward purity. Officers trained farmers. Compost pits multiplied. Fields were watched, nurtured, kept clean. By 2015, all of Sikkim’s 66,000 farming families were organic.

“We didn’t just grow food,” said Prem Das Rai, a former Sikkim MP.“We built a way of life.”

The land responded. Soil grew softer. Streams ran clearer. Bees returned, and cardamom yields rose. Sikkim’s farmers earned more, because clean food fetches clean money. Tourists came in droves, chasing mountain air and pesticide-free meals. Schools taught children how to farm without poison. The world noticed. In 2018, the UN gave Sikkim its highest prize for environmental policy.

That’s the story Kashmir wants to tell.

Kashmir’s agriculture is no small affair. It feeds most of its people and brings in billions. Apples, saffron, vegetables-they grow as easily here as wildflowers after snowmelt. Already, fifty thousand hectares are organic. More than twenty thousand are certified. In Bangund village, Pulwama, farmers like Bashir Ahmed stopped using chemicals back in 2017. Last summer, I saw him stack red, firm tomatoes into crates bound for Delhi.

“We’re making good money now,” he told me, wiping sweat from his temple. Bangund became Kashmir’s first organic village in 2018. Just seventy-two families. Four hundred kanals of land. But it’s something.

Then there’s Gurez. Tucked between mountains and memories, it’s perfect for growing food that doesn’t need much help-off-season peas, potatoes with bite, barley with history.“Gurez could be our Sikkim,” says Dr. Waseem Ahmad of SKUAST, Kashmir’s agricultural university. A 2013 industry report even predicted that organic farming could bring Kashmir ₹11,600 crore and create eight million jobs by 2025. That kind of change isn’t abstract, it’s the difference between ₹7,800 a year and ₹19,500 in a farmer’s pocket.

But the road ahead is slippery.

Kashmiri apples are also drowning in pesticides. Chemicals coat the trees each March. The same rain that makes the orchards bloom washes those toxins into the ground and the rivers. In 2010, doctors at SKIMS hospital found that nearly all of 432 brain cancer cases in orchard workers were linked to pesticides.“Our apples are our pride,” says activist Dr. Raja Muzaffar Bhat.“But they’re poisoning us.”

The National Green Tribunal fined the government ₹39 crore in 2021 for pesticide pollution in Doodh Ganga. A ₹149 crore cleanup followed. But the water still runs brown during the rains. I saw it myself in Baramulla-a stream that once reflected the sky now reflected nothing at all.

Even farmers who want to go clean hit snags. Insha Rasool tried organic farming in 2019 but couldn’t find decent seeds. Showkat Hussain, who runs training schools in Bandipora, says farmers crave change, but lack the tools.“They need help,” he told me. Bashir, back in Bangund, just wants a truck to move his harvest. The government has a ₹500 crore fund set aside for natural farming this year. Much of it lies untouched. Political parties, for their part, rarely mention organic farming at all.

“Sikkim had a plan,” says Dr. Waseem.“We’re scattered.”

But Sikkim stumbled too. Early on, its farmers panicked over smaller harvests. The government stepped in with seed kits, subsidies, storage, and roads. They didn’t just ask farmers to change, they helped them do it.

Kashmir’s steps are slower. There’s an organic market in Srinagar now. That helps. Over 3,400 farmers have been trained. That helps too. But what about trucks? Cold storage? Real-time help when pests come? Markets in every district? That’s what Bashir wants.

And then, there’s Gurez. Declaring it an organic valley, like Sikkim did, could light a fuse. Eco-tourism could follow. Training centers could bloom. And farmers, seeing success in their neighbors, might finally believe.

The world wants what Kashmir can grow. In 2022, the global organic food market hit ₹10.7 lakh crore. Kashmir’s saffron, apples, herbs-they belong on those shelves. That same 2013 report estimates that going organic could triple farmer incomes.

Sikkim did it with just seventy-five thousand hectares. Kashmir has more. Sikkim had fewer people. Fewer resources. Less attention. Still, it worked.

“If they could,” Dr. Waseem says,“we can.”

But it won’t happen by itself. Kashmir needs leaders who dream with budgets. It needs roads, trucks, seeds, and stories. It needs teachers in the fields, not just in offices. And above all, it needs belief-real, planted-in-the-soil belief.

In Bangund, Bashir pointed to his tomatoes. His shirt was damp. His smile was shy.“This is just the beginning,” he said.

Maybe it is.

Kashmir has the land. It has the water. It has the farmers. What it needs now is the will. Sikkim showed the world how it’s done. The question is no longer if Kashmir can do it.

It’s whether it will.

• Writer is an undergraduate student from Srinagar.

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