Photo source: Ahmedabad Mirror Naveed Qazi, Sustainability Analyst Resilience Through a Forgotten Mountain Crop Gurez Valley in north Kashmir has long been defined by its geographical isolation. The region has a short growing season as prolonged winter snowfall of nearly five months each year restricts agricultural activity. Yet these constraints have made Gurez Valley potentially suitable for cultivating buckwheat, a traditional Himalayan pseudo-cereal valued for its short maturity period, nutritional richness and a high tolerance to marginal growing conditions. While historically a staple heritage food in Gurez, buckwheat cultivation plummeted over the last few decades amid changes in food consumption, and growing availability of subsidised rice and wheat. In one of the most widely cited reviews of buckwheat improvement, Campbell (1997), writing in International Plant Genetic Resources Institute (IPGRI), described buckwheat as a short duration crop well adapted to marginal mountain e...

Photo source: The Global Kashmir  By Naveed Qazi, Sustainability Analyst O ver the past few decades, a growing scholarship has emerged from Kashmir valley, which has established a profound transformation of the valley’s agrarian landscape. Their research work suggests that agricultural land is steadily shrinking, farming is becoming less attractive as a livelihood, and the rural society is undergoing a process of de-agrarianisation. There have been several contemporary studies done which lay out policy, their implications, as well as scientific reasons behind agricultural decline, leading to varying perspectives. One of the earliest scientific examinations of this phenomenon came from agricultural economists, Dr. M.H. Wani, Sajad Hassan Baba, and Shahid Yousuf of SKUAST-Kashmir in their influential 2009 study. They came to some conclusions such as huge pressure of increasing population on land and other resources of the state leading to agricultural production decline. They also pe...