Shopian, Kashmir: Amid lines of apple trees glistening in soft sun rays, the fine lines on Shahnawaz Ahmad’s forehead are sinking deeper.Ahmad is scrolling on his phone, reading news about the India-US trade deal. As talks resumed in April-May, to finalise the interim Indo-US trade deal announced in February 2026, farmers like Ahmad are nervously contemplating the new damage the deal is going to cause.“Their deals don’t even count us,” says Ahmad, an apple grower in Shopian’s Imam Sahib block. Shopian’s apple orchards are spread across 26,231 hectares in the district, meanwhile around 70% to 80% of Jammu and Kashmir’s population is directly or indirectly associated with the horticulture sector.In South Asia’s most vulnerable agricultural regions, where horticulture is more prominent than any other occupation, this unsigned trade deal is one of the many factors causing fear among farmers.The valley accounts for nearly 75% of India’s total apple production, exporting close to 1.8 million metric tonnes every year. Trade, trials and tribulationsIn February this year, Union commerce and industry minister Piyush Goyal said that the interim trade agreement framework with the United States placed strong emphasis on safeguarding domestic agriculture, stating that the interests of farmers have been fully protected under the proposed pact.Goyal said India has offered only a tightly controlled, quota-based duty concession on apples imported from the United States, while simultaneously strengthening protective barriers for domestic apple growers.At present, apples are subjected to a higher import duty of 50% with a minimum import price of Rs 50 per kg, which restricts imports below Rs 75 per kg. But under the proposed trade pact, apples from the US will attract a minimum import price of Rs 80 per kg along with an import duty of 25%. This pricing structure effectively blocks imports of US apples priced below Rs 100 per kg, but lowers the import duty by 25%.The US, however, remains India’s largest export destination, accounting for approximately 22% of India’s total global exports. The tariff cuts are expected to benefit sectors such as precious metals and stones (including imitation jewellery), pharmaceuticals, apparel and textiles, machinery and nuclear reactors. Also read: Does Buying $500 Billion Worth of US Goods Serve India’s Interests?As deals, speculations and apples continue to ripen, farmers in Kashmir say that they’re the worst affected of all the regions that produce apple.Fears travel beyond tariffs. Farmers also contemplate competition. “Corporate farms in Washington have access to the best type of Controlled Atmosphere (CA) storage and automated grading technology. They can hold fruit for months and release it perfectly preserved when market prices peak. But many of us Kashmiri growers lack affordable access to high-tech cold stores,” said Abdul Rashid, an apple grower.Rashid connects the trade deal to a ground reality. “Even our apple is political. This damaging deal comes after the US-brokered ceasefire between India and Pakistan in May 2025. There is nothing we are heard about employment, agriculture, education. Delhi decides and we sit and watch,” Rashid said.Farmers across Kashmir also pointed out if this approach of not protecting or insulating farmers from such deals continues, the region will knowingly or unknowingly push away farmers from horticulture and agriculture.Inching away from applesFormer Shopian MLA Aijaz Ahmad Mir is mostly surrounded by farmers and others engaged in horticulture. It is his daily routine to discuss the damage to farms, from hailstorms, pests and now tariffs. “Apple is our identity, they can’t attack us like this” said Mir.Mir believes that by not safeguarding the interests of farmers and opening up the Indian market to foreign fruit imports like these will only alienate farmers further. “Kashmir is not like any other fruit producing region, we are dealing with several challenges at once, financially, ecologically and even politically, amid this, such policies are destroying the last resort for Kashmiris to earn a livelihood” he told The Wire.According to the J&K Economic Survey 2025-26, apple production comprises 50% of the total horticulture production of J&K against pear, apricot, peach, plum, cherry, citrus, mango, walnuts, almonds etc. The horticulture sector produces roughly Rs 10,000 crore in revenue and employs about 35 lakh individuals, either directly or indirectly, thereby supporting approximately seven lakh families, the official survey suggested.In February, the deal announcement sparked public furore. Kashmiri leadership said that the India-US trade deal meant a death knell for the horticulture sector, especially for apple production in Kashmir, owing to India’s decision to reduce basic customs duty on apples imported from the US from 50% to 25%, even though the Minimum Import Price (MIP) was set at Rs 80 per kilogram. Even under the new India-European Union trade deal, import duty on fresh fruits was reduced to 20% under a Tariff Rate Quota (TRQ) system. While the deal claims that the government of India will allow the entry of only 50,000 tonnes of apples per year from the EU at this reduced duty, the deal simultaneously agrees to increase the quota to 1,00,000 tonnes over the next ten years.Nissar Elahie inspects his kiwi plantation in Shopian’s Zainapora. Photo: Tarushi Aswani.As domestic and imported apples compete for Indian consumers, several farmers in Kashmir have even moved away from growing apples. In Shopian’s Zainapora, Nisar Elahie has effectively begun growing kiwis. “They fruit quicker than apples, cost more, and require less maintenance. After I had a successful yield, I also guided other farmers to take up kiwi cropping. We can’t just leave what we have traditionally followed for generations, so we are looking for alternate paths” Elahie told The Wire. Conflict and climate costsIn Baramulla’s Uri town, Abdul Rafiq boasts of a golden era of trade that is now gone. Rafiq is one of the many traders who transported a substantial amount of goods across the Line of Control for almost a decade after barter trade was introduced between the two nuclear neighbours in October 2008. Soon, Uri began receiving trucks of dry fruit, vegetables and carpets from Pakistan at the Salamabad Trade Facilitation from Muzaffarabad in Pakistan-ruled Kashmir.But in February 2019, when the Pulwama attack killed 40 Indian para-military soldiers, India shut this confidence building economic engagement in April 2019 to avenge the attack. For Rafiq and thousands like him, traders, farmers, truckers and handicrafts artisans suffered severely. “It was politics then, it is politics now that we and our apples are suffering. In 2019, one huge avenue of trade was shut, not after last year’s war, there is this trade policy. We can only pray for work now” Rafiq told The Wire.Afaq Hussain, Director and Founding Member of the Bureau of Research on Industry and Economic Fundamentals (BRIEF) looks at this deal from a different lens. “The geography of the region of Jammu & Kashmir puts it at an obvious disadvantage, as compared to the rest of the country when it comes to the transportation of goods. So if I have to transport something from Kashmir, and eventually it has to be exported to the US, then the logistics cost is going to be higher. So, Kashmir will be at a disadvantage, as far as other states are concerned, like Himachal or any other mainland states,” Hussain said, adding that the recent initiation of railways in the region may reduce this disadvantage for the farmers.An apple orchard in Shopian’s Imam Sahib; Shopian is locally known as the apple town of Kashmir. Photo: Tarushi Aswani.Hussain also believes that disadvantages incurred by farmers must push them to mitigate these challenges by recalibrating farming practices. “Farming practices also need to be brought at par with the rest of the country, the fertilisers, the quality, the storage, the distribution, the transportation, the whole process” he said.But when plunged into the uncertainty of climate-stressed harvests, several farmers in south Kashmir, also known as the region’s apple belt, are moving to high density plantations, which reduces the time taken for the fruit to mature. Farmers shared that this was one of the ways to mitigate substantial losses due to extreme weather events, including wind and hailstorms that have distressed crops in full bloom. In response, high-density farming as a modern technique has gained acceptance in the region that holds traditional farming close to its heart.Haseeb Ur Rehman, fruit scientist at Sher-e-Kashmir University of Agricultural Sciences and Technology of Kashmir (SKUAST-K) believes that there has been a drastic change in climate in recent years with regards to the reduction in chilling hours. This hurts apple cultivars that need around 1,200 hours of winter chill for proper bloom.Actively involved in agricultural research, particularly concerning high-density planting (HDP) in apples, nutrient dynamics and orchard management, Rehman told The Wire that due to this insufficient chilling, there is delayed or uneven bud break and poor flowering resulting in poor bloom. Bud break is the emergence of green tissue as a new shoot from a bud in spring.“Heat stress is causing great damage to the cultivar here, because of that fruit size is reduced, colour development is affected, leading to an overall decline in fruit quality. This is then topped with uneven and untimely rainfall and hailstorms, they further pose challenges. The last five years have shown the tremendous effects of climate change on apple growth,” Rehman said.Thousands of families who have spent generations tending to apple trees now watch their primary asset turn into a trap. Between a winter that never got cold enough to rest the trees and markets now under the threat of being flooded with subsidised US imports, the Kashmiri apple is rapidly becoming a financial liability. This deal, aimed at easing bilateral trade tensions, is generating unintended consequences in Kashmir, which produces the majority of India’s apples. As lower-tariff US apples enter Indian markets with longer shelf life, local growers are struggling to compete on both price, quality and storage front.At the same time, climate variability is doubling the pressure. Farmers are increasingly dependent on costly cold storage infrastructure and high-interest credit, as climate change disrupts normal weather patterns.The trade policy which was proposed after the India-Pakistan clash of May 2025, climate stress and a perpetual cycle of loans are actively intersecting to reshape the region’s agro-economy.