Kashmir - The Potential Global Hotspot for Agritourism

Agritourism is defined as any agriculturally based operation or activity that brings visitors to a farm. Agritourism includes a wide variety of activities, including navigating a terrace rice farm, going on walks and picking fruits in an orchid, practicing farming activities like sowing or harvesting, feeding and petting animals, last but not least staying on a farm amongst nature.

Many of the world's exotic locations are at forefront of agritourism. Taiwan, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Thailand are all known for their excellent agritourism infrastructure. Similarly, France, India, Australia, Spain, and the USA are well known for Enotourism or wine tourism which includes vineyard visits, harvesting of grapes, and tasting wine.

Why Kashmir

Kashmir, surrounded by the majestic Himalayas is a multifaceted and multicultured society. It provides distinctive uniformity and diversity at the same time through its fairs and festivals to art and architecture, from rites and rituals to seers and sagas, from languages and landscapes to geography and history, each and every aspect of life in Kashmir is a unique experience.

Kashmir is blessed with all ingredients required to make it a global agritourism hotspot. While it has a lush green picture-perfect landscape in every village with Himalaya overlooking every farm, it also has a strong regional culture and traditions to keep tourists entangled with the warm hospitable local diaspora.

Further, Kashmir is gifted by nature with hundreds of hectares of orchids, gardens, farms, and agroforests which are not just scenic but also provide opportunities to indulge in once in lifetime activities like plucking saffron flowers, collecting apples from the tree, sowing seeds in the terrace garden, and last but not the least observing cultivation of some of the rarest high altitude specialty herbs.

Value for Kashmir

Agritourism can hugely benefit Kashmir's economy in general and the agriculture economy in particular.

• It can help in generating additional revenue not only for farmers but also for rural businesses and services providers including homestays, guides, transportation providers, restaurants, handicraft makers to name a few.
• It will lead to the eventual upgrading and revitalization of rural community facilities leading to a better standard of life for residents.
• It can result in an increase in the availability of resources to preserve and protect rural practices, traditions, art, craft, and landscapes, which will be crucial to the economic benefits of agritourism.
• It will promote awareness about agriculture products from Kashmir leading to an increase in the market potential of these products.
• Other obvious benefits include an increase in jobs as enhanced income at the local level will galvanize economic activities and local demand hence employment, better harmony as economic security leads to a reduction in conflicts, and last but not the least integrating remote rural areas with mainstream economic activities.

What is Needed to be Done

In order to reap the potential of Agritourism in Kashmir key requirements include but are not limited to:

• A substantial public investment in rural infrastructure like roads, communication, community service, electrification.
• Incentivize local private investment in the agritourism sector through grants and subsidies to make farm side tourist facilities.
• Identify tourist attractions in a cluster of villages (terrace farms, orchids, saffron farms, flower gardens) and create an integrated marketing strategy to promote the same.
• Setup a semi-regulatory body to ascertain delivery of a quality experience to the tourist which can also act as a skill development body.
• Introduce from outside the state ancillary activities/services which can increase the attractiveness of Kashmir as a destination for agritourism, especially better health and wellness.