"Most farmers in this apple growing belt have not been able to get Nepali workers for doing farm work this time," said Kanwar Dayal Krishan Singh, a farmer in Kotkhai in upper Shimla who has been waiting for laborers to arrive, Vishal Gulati writes for Indo-Asian News Service.
"It seems more than 50 percent of the labor has not returned from home this season. It will definitely delay and hamper harvesting, which is just round the corner," he added.
Himachal Pradesh is one of India´s major apple producing regions. Most of the farm jobs like plucking and packing the fruit and lugging the boxes are done by Nepali workers who normally arrive in thousands every April and stay here till the harvesting season is over in October.
Mohan Sankhyan, another farmer, said: "Nepali laborers have been working in the orchards in this hill state for more than five decades. They have been doing most of the laborious tasks. Now their shortage is hitting the orchards, especially during harvesting."
The reason could lie in many farm hands getting better job opportunities in the industrial and construction sector in the metros and in their migrating to Gulf countries.
State horticulture director Gurdev Singh said: "The shortage of farm hands in the state is hitting apple orchards. We have reports that most of the Nepali laborers, particularly younger ones, are now preferring less labor-intensive jobs.
"They prefer to work in the Gulf in the industrial and construction sector. We have been noticing this trend in recent years. Another reason could be that Nepali workers are choosing to go to metropolitan cities of India where they earn handsome wages."
Over 200,000 families in Himachal Pradesh are involved in apple cultivation.
"Farm laborers from Bihar and Chhattisgarh are not ready to work in orchards. They are not adept at carrying huge loads of apple boxes and baskets up and down the hill slopes. So we are now pooling laborers from other farms, but their shortage would hamper harvesting," Ram Singh Negi, a farmer, said from his orchard 80 km from Shimla.
Thousands of other apple growers in the state are facing similar problems. The labor shortage is now so acute that farmers have to camp around major bus stands in the state to ´poach´ people.
"I have camped for days near the Shimla bus stand waiting for the Nepali laborers to arrive. Finally, I managed to get hold of three laborers. Now my family is also involved in apple harvesting. But things will go from bad to worse in the next season," said farmer Bipin Singh from a village near Narkanda town.
For years a Nepali family had taken care of his orchard. But now he has shifted his own family from Shimla to the village as the harvest season is close.
Besides apples, other fruits like cherries, pears, peaches, apricots, kiwi, strawberry, olives, almonds and plums are the major commercial crops of the state.
The economy of the hill state is highly dependent on horticulture, with the annual fruit industry being worth about Rs 20 billion.
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