the lede
12 THE CARAVAN
Barren Land
A saffron farmer’s take on
crop failure in Kashmir / Agriculture/ qazi wasifMohammad Habib Mir looked pensive as he
walked towards his saffron field on a cold day in
November. Fifty years ago, the 67-year-old farmer
was accustomed to collecting between 20 and 40
kilograms of saffron from each kanal—around
4,500 square feet—in large baskets made from
willow twigs. Nowadays, he is lucky if he man-
ages to collect around two kilograms, and he only
needs a small bag.
Mir, who was brought up in Pampore, a town
around 13 kilometres from Srinagar, took up saf-
fron cultivation full-time to support his familyafter his father’s death in 1967. “My grandfather
used to tell me, the deeper you dig, the land will
become more viable for sowing, and you will
produce more,” he said, referring to the labour-
intensive nature of saffron production.
Since farmers have to extract the stigma of
saffron flowers, and each flower only has three
stigmas, it takes anywhere between 100,000 and
200,000 flowers to produce a kilogram of dried
saffron.
India is the third-largest producer of the spice.
It is used as an ingredient in cosmetics, medicines,
dyes and perfumes. Nearly 7.3 percent of the
world’s saffron is produced in Jammu and Kash- dar yasin / ap photo