The vanishing mulberry trees of Kashmir

The gradual disappearance of these trees, a part of the union territory’s  heritage, has impacted the sericulture trade and led to migration, climate change and a way of life

Khursheed Ahmad Shah

Silkworms feed on new mulberry leaves in a local villager’s home in Putshai village in Kupwara, Jammu and Kashmir. Khursheed Ahmad Shah/The Migration Story

KUPWARA, Jammu & Kashmir: In villages like Gundimancher, Audoora, Gazriyal and Shartgund Payeen, migration doesn’t always look like people packing their bags and leaving overnight. Here, it happens slowly. A mulberry tree is cut and not replanted. A silkworm-rearing room turns into storage for apples. A young man leaves for hotel work in Srinagar. No goodbyes, no announcements—just small shifts, one after another, until an old way of life quietly fades.

The Tuell Kul, as locals call the mulberry tree, was once part of everyday life. It fed the silkworms, provided shade to children in summer and gave birds a place to nest. It stood at the heart of the silk tradition in this part of Kashmir. The trees are now quietly vanishing, ceding space to apple and walnut orchards. The silk trays are gone, and more families are turning to city jobs and labour to survive. The migration may be quiet, but it runs deep, leaving behind not just empty rooms, but a disappearing rhythm of life.

Abdul Rehman, 25, from Kupwara district in North Kashmir, comes from a family that was once deeply involved in sericulture. For decades, his family raised silkworms and tended to the work of mulberry trees that shaped many summers in the village.

He remembers those days clearly. “Back then, summers in the village revolved around the Tuell Kul,” he said. “Neighbours would compete to see who had the best trees, and we kids would spend the whole day picking and eating mulberries. Almost every home had at least three trees.”

But times changed. His family gave up silk rearing years ago. Now, Abdul works on his orchards, a fairly vast stretch of farmland around their village. “We left silk work long ago,” he said. “Now we’re putting our energy into our land. It feels more stable.”

The mulberry tree has historically been central to Kashmir’s economy and supported livelihoods across the valley. With its gradual easing out,  the sericulture trade has been badly impacted.

Nazir Ahmad Malik, 49, is a former ward member from Audoora Mawer village, around 29 kilometres from Kupwara and about 77 kilometres from Kashmir’s summer capital Srinagar. Malik’s family was among those with a long-standing tradition of silk-rearing in the region.

“My father did this work for more than 35 years, mainly because there weren’t many other opportunities,” Malik told The Migration Story. But I pursued sericulture for just two years.  This work doesn’t have a secure future. I have to feed 20 family members at a time, and that wasn’t possible through this job.”

Instead, Nazir turned to farming. “I have more than 20 kanals (around 2.5 acres) of agricultural land,” he added. “I now work on it day and night to fulfil the needs of my family.”

A 2020 study published in the International Journal of Current Microbiology and Applied Sciences titled ‘An Overview of Current Scenario of Sericulture in Jammu and Kashmir’, points out that the union territory was once a leading cocoon-producing region, with an estimated output of around 15 million kg in the early 1900s. Less than two decades later, by 2009, the production had dropped to approximately 8.32 million kg. Over the past five decades, the number of families engaged in sericulture has declined by nearly half, resulting in an average decrease of one percent every year in silk production.

The study also reveals that the area under mulberry cultivation in the Kashmir valley dropped from 290 hectares in 1990-91 to 211 hectares by 2019-20. The consequences of this have been grave both in terms of migration of people and to some extent climate change.

GOVERNMENTAL DISINTEREST

Practitioners and observers point to the government’s role in letting the sericulture industry go to seed. The existing infrastructural facilities and institutional support such as sheds for silkworm rearing, kits, sprays and mulberry nurseries fall woefully short of meeting the needs of silk farmers—the 2020 study revealed that there were only 67 government-run mulberry nurseries in the Kashmir region and 173 across the entire union territory.

Given this background, in many areas, particularly urban and peri-urban zones, farmers find it difficult to access sufficient quantities of quality mulberry leaves, often having to travel long distances for these. This mismatch becomes especially problematic when the distribution of silkworm ‘seeds’ (eggs) by the government exceeds the availability of feed, leading to poor cocoon yields and growing disillusionment among cultivators, says the 2020 study.

Ajaz Ahmad Bhat, director of sericulture, Jammu & Kashmir, pointed to another cause: ironically, the government’s decades-old Mulberry Protection Act that was enacted to safeguard the trees and people’s livelihood. “Silkworm farmers are allowed to pluck leaves from any mulberry tree, even those growing on private land,” he said. “This unusual status often led to tensions in rural areas, where neighbours would argue over the right to access the tree’s leaves.”

Bhat said that this led to many landowners beginning to see the mulberry tree not as a resource but a source of conflict and a loss of control over their own property. “People gradually stopped planting this ‘sarkari’ tree altogether,” he said. “This shift in perception and practice has contributed significantly to the decline of mulberry trees across Kashmir.”

GRUELLING WORK, LOW RETURNS

Mohammad Dilawer Khan stands in front of his mulberry trees in Gundimancher, Kupwara, in Jammu and Kashmir. Khursheed Ahmad Shah/The Migration Story

The government’s role apart, there are several other reasons why mulberry plantations have been receding.

Kulsum Ahad, a scholar working on rural development at the University of Kashmir, cited the gruelling nature of the work. “Sericulture demands constant attention,” she said. “Farmers must feed silkworms every few hours, control their environment and manage everything from cultivating mulberry trees to harvesting delicate cocoons all by hand. Despite this intense labour, the rewards are often uncertain. A single disease outbreak or an unexpected change in weather can wipe out months of effort.”

Ahad emphasised that this kind of work demanded the attention of entire families, which was once the norm in Kashmir. However, with the younger generations unwilling to put in so much work for relatively smaller returns, sericulture has become untenable. “Once a proud and essential part of many families’ livelihoods, it is losing its appeal under the weight of growing challenges,” she said.

Forty-six-year-old Dilawar Ahmad Khan from Gundimancher, Lolab village stands testimony to this. Khan, with over 25 years of silkworm rearing under his belt, was among the seniormost practitioners in the district but chose to quit and take up agricultural labour and construction jobs two years ago.

“I have a family of five to support. I do whatever work comes my way in and around Kupwara town, sometimes in the fields, sometimes at construction sites,” he told The Migration Story. “In a good month, I make about ₹15,000 to ₹17,000 but it all depends on the kind of work available.”

“Right now, a labourer earns over Rs 650 per day,” continued Khan. “The peak season for labourers is in the months of May and June, when most of us are busy with agriculture-related work. This is also the peak time for silkworm rearing—the last stage of the cocoon needs your undivided effort and attention and you cannot think of other jobs in this period. Since the money from silkworm rearing is not satisfactory, people are preferring to earn money elsewhere.”

 Khan also pointed to the low quality of silkworm seeds given by the government. “Often, at the end of all the work, the silkworms die,” he said. “There is also no proper support in terms of other infrastructure—for instance, there is not a single shed for rearing silkworms in my village.”

Sheds are a recent addition to governmental infrastructure but are necessary, said Khan, because of the change in Kashmir’s houses over the years. “Pucca (concrete) houses with decorated walls and carpets are not conducive to sericulture,” he said. “The kachcha (mud) houses, which had just a patij (a Kashmiri traditional mat made of paddy grass) on the floor, was where we all reared silkworms. The mud walls maintain temperatures much better. Also, our younger generations don’t allow us to rear silkworms in the new houses, since it’s a smelly venture and the stink spreads through the house.”

Khan’s frustration with the trade mirrors a wider trend of migration across Kupwara’s remote villages. Faced with relentless labour and meagre earnings, many sericulture workers are quitting their ancestral livelihood in search of better opportunities elsewhere.

CHOOSING BETWEEN TRADITION AND SURVIVAL

Among these workers is Mohammad Rafeeq Bhat, 36, from Gundimancher village. “I have four mouths to feed,” he said softly, “and what I made from silk rearing was never enough.” A year ago, Bhat gave up the work that had been in his family for generations. “There was no space, no proper tools, and the returns just never justified the struggle,” he said. “You give it your all—your time, your body, your soul—but the reward is almost nothing. I kept at it for as long as I could but I was drowning. It broke something inside me to walk away, but I had to choose between tradition and survival.”

Bhat migrated 130 kilometres from Gundimancher to Srinagar, where he now works in a hotel. “I feel at peace,” he said. “I earn enough, and most importantly, I can keep my daan (traditional Kashmiri clay stove) burning and feed my family. That’s all that matters now.”

Such narratives point to a larger transformation taking place across Kashmir’s countryside, where traditional livelihoods are increasingly being replaced by urban employment. “I left sericulture work about ten years ago,” said Abdul Hamid Pir, 65, a former silk farmer from Gazriyal village in Kupwara. “There was no support of any kind from the government. No schemes, no help, no insurance. We had to move on.”

For more than 20 years, Pir would travel every winter to Moga in the northern state of Punjab, hoping to make ends meet by selling shawls, handmade artefacts and whatever else he could carry. “It wasn’t easy, but it was better than sitting here with no work,” he recalled.

Many families are turning towards more reliable sources of income, said Kulsum Ahad. “The region’s growing tourism industry is especially appealing,” she said. “Jobs like houseboat operating, driving taxis or selling local handicrafts like the much-in-demand Pashmina shawls offer better pay and far less physical strain.”

Ahad said that a shift in mindset was also fuelling the change. “Young people, increasingly better educated and exposed to urban lifestyles, are no longer drawn to the demanding world of silkworm farming,” she said. “Many choose to move to cities or chase white-collar careers for a steady paycheck, leaving behind the work their parents and grandparents once did. As fewer young hands take up the trade, the number of people involved in sericulture continues to shrink.”

LOSING A WAY OF LIFE

Fresh mulberry leaves stored in trays in a local’s house in Putshai village in Kupwara, Jammu and Kashmir. Khursheed Ahmad Shah/The Migration Story

The migration of land from mulberry plantations to horticulture and the movement of people away from their villages in search of work is about much more than employment. “It’s about losing a part of who these people are, and the culture and history tied to silk farming,” said Javeed Abdullah, an author, academic and district coordinator of education in Kupwara. “When they leave their villages, they take those traditions with them, and slowly those ways of life start to fade away. If nothing changes, entire villages could end up empty, and with them, a part of Kashmir’s heritage might be lost forever.”

 Abdullah remembers how in his village, Haril, sericulture was not just a livelihood but a way of life. “As a child, I’d watch hundreds of villagers diligently nurturing silkworms and collecting mulberry leaves with care and pride,” he said. “The mulberry tree, once a symbol of prosperity, stood tall in every corner of my village. But all that has faded now. Even some close friends who pursued sericulture as a subject at the graduation level eventually left midway, shifting to other fields like humanities and science. That tells a story of disillusionment.”

“It’s disheartening to say that in the past 15 years, not a single mulberry tree has been planted in my village,” he continued. “The younger generation doesn’t even recognise them anymore. A nearby orchard in Shartgund Bala, once blooming with over a hundred mulberry trees along the Mawer Langate river, has vanished without a trace. The silence of that lost orchard echoes the silence of a forgotten trade.”

Abdullah emphasised how the decline had distanced villagers from a part of their identity. “Now more than ever, there is a dire need for awareness, revival strategies, and career counselling to reconnect people with sustainable traditional livelihoods like sericulture,” he said.

The government seems to have plans for this. Bhat said that his department was doing everything it could to bring the sericulture industry back to life. “From conducting field surveys to distributing mulberry saplings and holding workshops and seminars, we’re trying to reach out to people and raise awareness,” he said. “But we can’t do it alone. We need the support and participation of the youth to truly revive this industry so that we can create jobs and build livelihoods right here in our own valley.”

HORTICULTURE AND CLIMATE CHANGE

Apart from the human displacement, another kind of migration is happening in Kashmir—the migration of land. “Farmers are increasingly shifting from mulberry plantations to horticulture and growing fruit,” said J&K sericulture director Ajaz Ahmad Bhat. “The high market demand for sweet fruit both in and outside Kashmir enables them to earn much more with far less effort.”

The move to horticulture, however, has had a concerning  environmental fallout, emphasised Dr Lateef Ahmad, climatologist and agronomist at Sher-e-Kashmir University of Agricultural Sciences and Technology. “In Kashmir, only about 20–25 percent of the land has been brought under horticulture, mostly in the districts of Anantnag, Baramulla, and Budgam,” he said. “But even this relatively small shift has come at a cost, as it has overshadowed the presence of native broadleaf trees.”

Dr Ahmad pointed out that the decline of mulberry trees was  worrying not just for the sericulture industry but also for the environment. “These trees have a rare ability to store carbon in the soil, something we’re already losing at an alarming rate,” he said. “Their disappearance means that we’re losing a natural way to keep the earth in balance.”

Trees that store carbon in the soil contribute to a healthy ecosystem and can help mitigate climate change. Through photosynthesis, they absorb the carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and store it in their biomass, including their roots, stems, and leaves. This process helps to reduce the amount of the major greenhouse gas in the atmosphere.

Dr Ahmad pointed out that the Himalayan regions were already under attack from deforestation. “There’s more combustion, more vehicles and tightly packed houses, so obviously temperatures are rising,” he said. “A decade ago, the average highest temperature in Kashmir was around 26 to 27 degrees Celsius. Now we’re seeing erratic snowfall, shifts in rainfall and unexpected weather events. In 2024, we had heat waves that badly impacted plant growth since our local flora can tolerate only up to 29 degrees Celsius. These rising temperatures have also affected the silkworm-rearing industry.”

Edited by Radha Rajadhyaksha

Khursheed Ahmad Shah is freelance journalist based out of Jammu and Kashmir. He covers rural life, health, education, food and culture writing. His work has been featured in numerous national and local publications and organizations.