Different Kettle Of Fish

The past decade has witnessed a sea change in trout farming since the Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) government decided to allow the entry of private players. When a Scotsman named J.S. Macdonall shipped 1,800 trout eggs into Kashmir in 1900, he introduced the fishing culture to the region, turning Srinagar’s clean and fast-moving streams into a sporting hub for local and foreign anglers. Over a century later, cold-water trout is the most popular fish on the Valley platter, and a growing number of farmers are eyeing opprtunities to export trout to meet European demand, bringing the saga full circle. The past decade has witnessed a sea change in trout farming since the Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) government decided to allow the entry of private players. In 2019-20, the last year before the COVID-19 pandemic, J&K had 534 farmers producing 650 tonnes of trout; by 2022-23, the industry had grown to 1,144 farmers whose production had shot up more than 200% to a whopping 1,990 tonnes of trout, according to the Union Territory’s Fisheries department. It was European experts who motivated J&K towards trout farming. In 1984, they supported a project in Kokernag in south Kashmir and suggested to rope in water-run mill owners to take up trout farming. The idea was to limit the government role to providing seed, feed and monitoring. Kashmir’s water and climatic conditions are akin to Europe. Small farmers took up farming in the first phase and now we see more and more educated unemployed youth coming forward,” he added. With the help of Kashmiri farmers, could even surpass Denmark, which produces more than 55,000 tonnes of trout per year. Our water and other resources are of much higher scale than Denmark, which is dominating the European market with trout produce. Trout can even compete with salmon in the near future. Climate change poses , shrinking high altitude lakes and fast disappearing water bodies due to climate change a nascent threat to the emerging trout industry in Kashmir. The fish only survive in fast flowing and nutritious streams, with water temperature hovering up to 20 degrees Celsius. However, the government is bracing up to meet the challenge. Under its Holistic Agriculture Development Plan, the government is offering subsidies to set up Recirculating Aquaculture Systems (RAS), a technology that uses ground water to create in-house ponds for trout farming. A large RAS project can produce 10 metric tonnes of trout annually. Two RAS projects are already functional in Kashmir and around a dozen fresh applications are in the pipeline, as trout farming finally starts attracting bigger businesses as well. Invoking the global popularity of Kashmiri apples, a senior Fisheries Department official hoped Kashmiri trout could soon become the Union Territory’s next big export product.