Hill States Horticulture Forum flags FTAs as major threat to apple growers

Srinagar, Dec 31: The Hill States Horticulture Forum (HSHF) raised serious concerns over the impact of ongoing and proposed Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) on India’s apple sector, warning that any reduction in import duties could severely destabilise the horticulture-driven economies of hill states.

A statement issued here said that a high-level delegation of the Forum, led by Harish Chouhan and comprising Maajid A. Wafai, Bashir Ahmad Naik, Izhan Javeed, Irshad A. Bhat and Sunil Aggarwal, met Union Agriculture Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan at his residence to convey the collective concerns of apple growers from Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand.

The delegation underlined that horticulture, particularly apple cultivation, forms the economic backbone of hill states, sustaining lakhs of farming families and supporting a vast network of allied livelihoods such as labour, transport, cold storage, packaging and local trade. Any adverse policy shift affecting apple prices or market access, they said, would have far-reaching socio-economic consequences across the Himalayan region.

Farmer representatives expressed deep apprehension over policy signals emerging from recent and ongoing trade negotiations, including talks with New Zealand, the European Union, the United States and Chile. They cautioned that tariff concessions on apple imports, even if introduced through tariff-rate quotas, would expose domestic growers to unfair competition from heavily subsidised and mechanised producers abroad.

The Forum warned that any dilution of the existing 50 percent customs duty would place Indian apple growers at a structural disadvantage. They also flagged proposals that could allow apple imports from March, arguing that such a move would directly undermine the domestic marketing season and inflict serious damage on the cold-storage infrastructure painstakingly built across hill states over decades with support from central and state governments.

Allowing imports at the very start of the Indian apple season, the delegation said, would depress domestic prices and trigger a cascading impact across the horticulture value chain, affecting cold-store operators, transporters, packers, commission agents, farm labourers and thousands of orchard-dependent households.

The Forum stressed that apple cultivation is not merely an agricultural activity but a comprehensive rural economy that contributes significantly to regional GDP and employment, making it particularly vulnerable to market disruptions caused by sudden import surges.

The delegation urged the Union government to immediately review and reconsider any proposed reduction in apple import duties under the FTA framework. It also sought a comprehensive socio-economic impact assessment of existing and proposed FTAs on domestic horticulture, stronger safeguard mechanisms to prevent market flooding, and meaningful engagement with farmer groups during trade negotiations. The Forum further called for a revision of the assessing value of imported apples, recommending that it be raised from the current Rs 50 to Rs 90 to prevent under-invoicing and protect domestic markets.

Members of the delegation said they left the meeting reassured after the Union Agriculture Minister listened patiently to their concerns and assured them that the interests of India’s farmers would not be compromised. The assurance, they said, provided confidence that the issues flagged by the hill states would receive due consideration at the highest policy-making levels.