The not-so-sweet journey of Uttarakhand’s peaches

With dusty pink patches lending a blushing glow to its citrine skin tone, peaches are one of the prettiest fruits. They are also among the most succulent ones. It’s difficult to bite into a ripe peach without having a streak of its syrupy juice flowing down your chin. The luscious drupes have been for several decades a matter of pride for farmers in the Ramgarh valley of the Nainital district in Uttarakhand. But the sparkle in their eyes is beginning to fade now as rising costs of transportation and labour, and unpredictable weather patterns each year create bigger dents in their earnings from the crop.

Come summer and the Ramgarh block of Kumaun region jolts out of its usual languid pace of life. It is the time when the ‘tourist season’ kicks off, and roads get lined with cars full of people seeking respite from the heat of the plains. It’s also the time when trees laden with fruits shine bright against the emerald hills as you start descending from the Gagar peak. The Ramgarh valley – its other end bordered by the lofty Mukteshwar stretch – is the fruit bowl of Uttarakhand, where the Himalayan hills are covered with rows after rows of terraced orchards nurturing apple, apricot, plum and peach trees. Farmers have now also started sitting with heaps of fruit by the roadside to sell them to tourists. 

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Peaches weren’t always the primary crop in this area. About a century ago, the hillsides were dotted mostly with apple and apricot trees. But as temperatures began rising and soil composition altered over the years, adversely affecting the apple crop, farmers made the shift around three decades ago towards planting the more suitable peach and plum trees. Now these fruits are the main source of livelihood for most farmers of Ramgarh block. Some farmers however continue to grow apples too. 

The peach trees bear wispy pink flowers in March-April, providing a pleasant burst of colour to the hillsides that are still barren after the harsh, snowy winter. The other fruit trees here – apple, plum, apricot and pear – bloom in spring too, but they have white flowers. Against the brown landscape of the mountains, the peach blossoms create a fairyland-like vista. 

The spring season brings with it the beginning of worries for the farmers. Harsh rain and occasional hail storms destroy the flowers and the tender green fruits. Stormy rainfall that continues for a couple of days is enough to wipe out the entire produce, leaving the farmers at the mercy of loans from moneylenders. On the other hand, lack of enough showers prevents the fruits from bulking up, and the shrunken fruit fetches far less than the usual price. 

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The fruiting season begins in early May when the first lots of apricots get ready for picking. June however is the busiest time, when apricots are on their way out and peaches and plums get ripe enough to be harvested. The preparation begins with collecting the packing material. While so far the fruits were packed in wooden boxes, cardboard cartons are fast replacing them. “Wooden boxes have become an expensive exercise,” Dhyan Singh Bisht, a resident of village Nathuakhan, said. “It costs around Rs 70 to make a wooden crate while the cardboard ones come for only about Rs 25-30.”

All the family members, including children, are involved in the process. They sit together in empty rooms marked for the purpose of collecting and packing the fruits. Wooden planks are nailed together to make crates. Using potassium permanganate solution, each wooden crate is stamped with the name of the fruit and initials of the farmer and the wholesaler with whom the former deals in Haldwani – the nearest wholesale market for fruits in the region. The transporters working in the area are familiar with the initials and the boxes are handed over to the right dealer with no interaction taking place between the farmer and the wholesaler until it’s time to collect the payment.

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Fruit picking is a time-consuming, laborious exercise. Each fruit is assessed for its readiness before it’s plucked by hand. “We pick fruits from morning until noon and spend the rest of the day packing them in boxes,” Prema Bisht, a mother of two small children, said. “I can collect about 200 kg of peaches in four hours,” she added. Farmers grow the Red June, Florida King, and Nectarine varieties of peaches here. 

The fruits are collected in small rooms that act as storage facilities for each family. Since the orchards are often located at a distance, sometimes even kilometres away from home, the farmers have to make several trips a day, trekking up and down the hills, to carry the peaches to their godown. 

Packing peaches is a family drill too. The boxes are lined with newspaper to absorb excess moisture. Dried pine needles are used as padding between layers of fruits to act as a cushion. Fruits of varying sizes are selected to adequately fill the spaces. Each carton contains about 10 kg of peaches.  

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Take a stroll down any village road in the evening and you will come across boxes filled with fruits stacked at several points. Villagers often walk long distances on rocky dirt tracks, carrying as many as 5-6 cartons at a time on the head, to reach the spot where the truck engaged by them will come to pick up the batch for the day. They make several trips, up and down the hill from their homes to the roadside, often waiting for hours for the truck to arrive and carry their crop to Haldwani. 

This year, the peach crop has been affected by untimely rains. The yield as well as the quality of the fruit is low, and the farmers are earning only about Rs 150 per box, at a rate of around Rs 15 for 1kg of peaches. That’s almost a tenth of the price that the final customer pays for it in a big city like Delhi. “The long chain of transactions involved between the farmer and the customer keeps adding to the cost at various junctures,” said Dhyan Singh Bisht. “If my entire family does not get involved in this work, and I have to hire labour from outside, I will end up in losses.”