Suhail Chauhan at his apple farm in Matiana, about 40 km from Shimla. (Express Photo by Abhinav Saha)It is barely 11 on a foggy, rainy morning at an apple orchard in Matiana, over 40 km from Shimla, but half of Suhail Chauhan's working day is over and he is now headed home. “Which other job can give you such returns? I live with my family and can give them time and attention. I breathe clean air and eat fresh food. And most importantly, I now make more money than I did while in a regular job,” says Suhail, who held a regular 9-to-5 job at a private university in Shimla until a little over a year ago but who is now an apple farmer.
Suhail, 29, is among several young men who have quit their jobs in metros to return to their villages and orchards in Himachal Pradesh's Shimla district to grow apples.
Apples make up over 80 per cent of Himachal Pradesh's Rs 3,500 crore fruit economy, with the fruit primarily grown in Shimla, Kullu, Kinnaur and Mandi districts. With 39,460 hectares, Shimla accounts for the highest area of the crop under cultivation.
Like with most other things in the state, the apple too comes with a colonial legacy. Captain A A Lee, a British Army soldier, is said to have planted the first apple tree in Kullu Valley in 1870. The apples, however, turned out sour and not many took to them. In the late 1880s, a few apple trees were planted by the British in Mashobra, 10 km from Shimla, then the summer capital of British India, but these…
