In the terraced hills of Uttarakhand, where thin soils and unpredictable weather have long kept farmers tethered to subsistence crops, Uttarakhand Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami is betting on apples and kiwis to rewrite the equation. On 31 July 2026, CM Dhami outlined his government's push to expand high-quality horticulture across the state through dedicated missions — and to shield those harvests from the climate itself.

In his post, Dhami wrote: 'एप्पल मिशन एवं कीवी मिशन के जरिए प्रदेश में उच्च गुणवत्ता वाली बागवानी को बढ़ावा दिया जा रहा है' — 'High-quality horticulture is being promoted across the state through the Apple Mission and the Kiwi Mission.' The government, he said, is supplying farmers with improved plant varieties, technical guidance, and subsidies across multiple heads to draw them toward more profitable fruit cultivation alongside traditional farming.

Apple Mission and Kiwi Mission: What Farmers Are Getting

The Apple Mission and Kiwi Mission are Uttarakhand's state-level programmes aimed at introducing improved varieties and modern cultivation practices to hill farmers. Under these schemes, growers receive saplings of superior cultivars, hands-on technical support, and financial grants to offset the steep upfront cost of switching crops. The kiwi programme specifically targets zones in the state where altitude and rainfall create conditions suited to the fruit — a crop that commands strong market prices relative to traditional staples.

Both missions draw on the architecture of the central government's Mission for Integrated Development of Horticulture, launched in 2014, which was designed to help states accelerate fruit crop promotion with structured subsidy pipelines. Uttarakhand's state-level missions layer additional support on top of that framework.

Polyhouses: Farming Against the Weather

Perhaps the most consequential piece of Dhami's announcement is the push for polyhouse farming. The government is actively encouraging farmers to set up polyhouses — climate-controlled growing structures — through subsidies, so that adverse weather does not wipe out a season's effort. For Himalayan farmers, where hailstorms, unseasonal frost, and erratic monsoons can devastate open-field crops, this is not a luxury. It is insurance.

Dhami framed the entire package — plant subsidies, protected cultivation support, and horticulture grants — as a route to farmer self-reliance (aatmanirbhar). The logic is straightforward: a farmer who earns more from a kiwi orchard or a polyhouse vegetable crop is less dependent on price-volatile staple markets and government procurement.

Uttarakhand's Horticulture Bet in a Broader National Pattern

Uttarakhand is not alone in this pivot. Across India's hill states, governments have increasingly turned to horticulture diversification as the answer to terrain and climate constraints that make large-scale grain farming unviable. What distinguishes Uttarakhand's current approach is the pairing of crop-specific missions with protected-cultivation infrastructure — addressing both what farmers grow and how they protect it.

The state's horticulture sector supports a significant share of rural livelihoods in its upper districts. Whether the Apple and Kiwi Missions translate into measurable income gains will depend on adoption rates, market linkages, and the scale of subsidy disbursement in coming seasons — numbers that will test how far the policy ambition reaches into the hills.

For now, the signal from Dehradun is clear: Uttarakhand is staking its agricultural future on the fruit of its mountains, not just the grain of its plains.