PAMPORE - At 4am, before the first call to prayer echoes through Pampore’s saffron fields in the Pulwama district of Indian-administered Kashmir, 52-year-old Bashir Ahmad Bhat steps out with a flashlight.
The crisp air carries the scent of soil, but his heart sinks – his precious saffron corms, nurtured for months, lie ravaged, devoured overnight.
“It’s like a war,” Bashir says, his voice filled with exasperation. “We fought climate change, fought low market prices.”
“But who would have thought we’d have to fight porcupines?”
For generations, farmers like Bashir have cultivated saffron in Pampore, the heart of India’s saffron industry and the third-largest in the world after Iran and Afghanistan.
The land here is considered sacred by locals, producing some of the world’s finest saffron with an unmatched 8.72 percent crocin content. Crocin determines saffron’s colour and antioxidant value: the higher the value, the better the quality. Kashmir’s saffron has a deep crimson hue and strong aroma.
These farmers have faced a range of challenges and have outlasted them – from a more than three-decade-long deadly conflict between armed separatists and Indian security forces, to smuggling and adulteration of saffron as it heads to global markets, affecting prices for producers.
Yet, in recent years, the world’s most expensive spice faces a new and unexpected threat in Kashmir: the Indian crested porcupine.
Once confined to the region’s forests, the porcupines – a protected species in Jammu and Kashmir – have ventured into saffron farms, driven by deforestation, habitat loss and climate change. Unlike other rodents, these nocturnal creatures dig deep into the earth, seeking out saffron bulbs for food.
Kashmir’s saffron production was already struggling. Battered by erratic rainfall, inadequate irrigation and urban encroachment on farmland, it had plummeted from 15.97 metric tonnes in 1997-98 to just 3.48 metric tonnes in 2021-22.
But over the past five to seven years, farmers say the devastating damage wrought by porcupines has compounded the crisis. They report losing up to 30 percent of their crops annually to porcupines.
By 2024, federal government data showed Kashmir’s saffron yield had fallen to 2.6 metric tonnes, putting at risk a $45million industry that sustains 32,000 families across the region. (Al Jazeera/Reuters)
