For a farmer, an orchard is not merely a piece of land. It is months of labour, investment, hope and often the only dependable source of a family’s annual income. When a sudden hailstorm tears through standing crops and fruit trees in a matter of minutes, it can wipe out months of hard work in the blink of an eye.
The sudden hailstorm accompanied by strong winds in parts of Beerwah in Budgam is therefore not just a weather event. For the affected farming families, it is an economic setback that demands an equally swift administrative response.
Farmers had spent months cultivating their fields and tending their orchards, waiting for the season when their labour would translate into income. Instead, nature has left damaged fruit-bearing trees, battered crops and uncertainty about what remains of their expected earnings.
The immediate requirement is simple: go to the ground, assess the damage and document it without delay. Government departments cannot accurately understand the extent of agricultural losses from offices and files alone. Teams must visit the affected villages, inspect orchards and fields, record the damage and prepare a credible assessment. Every passing day matters, particularly when damaged crops and fruit can deteriorate further.
For farmers, an assessment is not merely a bureaucratic exercise. It is the first step towards relief. The administration has mechanisms for dealing with weather-related agricultural losses. What farmers reasonably expect is that these mechanisms should work when they are actually needed. If a family loses a substantial portion of its seasonal income because of an extreme weather event, assistance delayed for months can lose much of its meaning.
There is also a larger lesson here. Kashmir’s agriculture and horticulture remain highly vulnerable to sudden weather fluctuations. Hailstorms, unseasonal rainfall, high winds, heatwaves and other extreme weather events are increasingly becoming serious risks to farm livelihoods. Climate vulnerability is no longer an abstract environmental concern; it is directly affecting household incomes.
This makes preparedness as important as post-disaster relief. Crop insurance coverage, timely weather advisories, protective infrastructure, scientific orchard management and accessible compensation mechanisms need greater attention. Farmers should not be left to face every climatic shock alone after investing their savings and labour into the land.
At the same time, relief must be based on transparent assessment. Genuine losses should be identified fairly, assistance should reach those actually affected, and the entire process should remain free from unnecessary delays and discretion. Beerwah’s farmers are not asking for charity. They are asking for the damage they suffered to be recognised and for the support available under government provisions to reach them.
When a storm takes only minutes to destroy a season’s labour, administration should not take months to respond. The hailstorm has already passed. The test for the administration begins now.
