The Worm Has Turned

• Climate change has severely affected Himachal Pradesh's famous Thanedar-Kotgarh apple belt and other mid-altitude apple-growing areas
  
• This year's apple crop is expected to be 30-50% less, due to rising temperatures, lack of snowfall and rain
  
• Studies have established that from 1973-1990 to 2000-2007, average winter temperatures have gone up by 3 degrees centigrade and snowfall has decreased from 190 cm to 95 cm
  
• Apple farmers are now turning to mangoes, pomegranate, flowers
  
• Apple cultivation is now shifting to the higher altitudes of Lahaul-Spiti and Kinnaur districts, though arable land there is limited

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"The Golden Delicious is a very fine apple indeed and I am working to make Kotgarh the headquarter of this fruit in India..."

—Excerpt from a letter from Satyanand Stokes to his mother in the US in 1930