Panghumas Orchards

11/02/2026

... From the archives

17/04/2025

.. the season of Morels is upon us - nature's bounty.

09/12/2024

...after an eternity of waiting we have finally got a thin blanket of white manure. May the heavens showers a few more of these to help the farmers

03/09/2024

...with wholesale prices of Apples this year (adjusted for inflation), one part of this Italian Apple market chart 📉 (falling apple prices) is coming true for us but the other side of chart 📈 (increasing productivity dramatically) to offset the fall in prices, is not happening on large enough scale due to the dramatic climate events every year and other factors. We need a dramatic shift of some kind.

**Apple & What lies ahead:**
This picture/graph may be historical analysis from South Tyrol but this is our future. For us it is a forward looking curve. This is part of learning from those who are were in our shoes before us. To get things in perspective per this graph we are in the 1960s comparatively and are now experiencing the early signs of what happened in Italy in early 1970s and beyond. We don’t need to take 40 years to get here. We will do it in 10 years because we don’t need to research a new way (just adapt).

**The Main considerations for our decision making:**
First time competition to our Apples has led to a healthy discussion on our ways of farming and post harvest technology across the Himachal and internet has helped speed up change. The energy levels around the topic are high. Therefore, the attached graph should provide an insight into our future. Key Considerations to build actions for all those who are thinking right now:
a. Transition Time and Stage of development: In South Tyrol, the transition morphed through a painful period around World War II. Some economic transformations took 20 years – believe me we don’t have that much time left.

b. Importers: The yield and price effect will show in the Indian economy this way from now onwards. The importers will push prices to the edges or to below our breaking even point as they have deeper pockets. However, we can challenge importers better if we stay in the market for longer than 2 months a year.

c. Grow to Store (short or medium term): I know everyone is working this part. However, think one topic is not on the cards yet – we need to grow to store and not to sell. Farm practices need to be adapted for this and a whole lot of storage related treatments need to be considered to spread out our supply and introduce store friendly varieties to some extent.

d. Aspiration related conspicuous consumption: The consumers will put more pressure on us by making choices in favour of imported apple. Standard consumer behavior in developing economies. Conspicuous consumption is always favored towards imported goods due to aspirational value; and consumers will pay a premium but we can short circuit this in the media connected world through a common brand management that catches the conscious of our consumers “eat fresh”, “eat local – this is what brought back the English apple industry from the dead (yes it had died totally).

e. Waiting for the big boys (Super Markets): In the world of fruit and veg, it is unavoidable that in 10 years time these big boys will have at least half of our market. The Adani group’s presence is the first link in this chain. We need to fill this space with our very own organizations. Otherwise, once again the mega-dalals will become billionaires at our cost. The deadly thing about super markets is that they have Supply Chain, financial and political muscle to negotiate globally and will their impact will be much bigger than small time importers who are in it to make a quick buck. You will suddenly find apples from Brazil sell at your doorstep.


**Opportunities:**
All the above looks like major threats to our economy but herein lies the opportunity to wake up and move on. What do we have to our advantage:
a. Population: We have a population of 1.3billion; not everyone can afford the premium apples but we will have to diversify our crops. With premium apples we can’t get the high yields but can get the high volumes and therefore margins per unit of land. Therefore, the high volumes will get you the cash per acre you need. In a nutshell – product differentiation. We need to sell organic to the premium paying environmentally conscious consumer, sell affordable product to poor consumer to increase our market and generate volumes and not depend upon the aspirations of our middle class only.

b. Low Labour and input Costs per acre: It will take a few life-times to get our input costs equal to anyone in the world. Per acre fixed input costs at our farm are still (at higher side) around Rs.70,000 ($1200) per acre compared to $15000 in South Tyrol and rest of the temperate world. Therefore, a marginal increase in production will make it possible to make good profits at lower prices.

**The fun Stuff:**

Just for information but interesting question a friend asked. Why we keep going back to the South Tyrolean example. This is because of various reasons basically, what we are to India (the highlanders) they are to Italy. The proximity of our socio-cultural situation, our economy and way of life is closest to South Tyrol in the world (believe it or not). Here are some pointers:
a. Topography: We are close to them on topography (to some extent). They grow apples in the shadow of mighty Alps. Mountain systems cause early spring frost. They were first ones to innovate solutions. Also, many orchards are on slopes and large farm equipment is not viable.

b. Small family orchards: 65% of all orchards are less than 3 hectares. Economic orchard size to make a living without needing a second job is 3.5 to 4 hectares

c. Remote and removed from the social state of rest of our country. Social and cultural way of life unlike rest of their country and a need to preserve the social capital. In some ways this is true for Apple growing regions in India as well. Remote setting in mountains, and the social and cultural values that are unlike the rest of the country. This needs to be preserved and it can only be done if we all do not emigrate to the plains in search of livelihood – for which we need a viable orchard economy.

04/08/2024

...our conditions were tough enough to survive anyway and now - the storms; but with some resilience, we all rise together.