GILGIT-Baltistan has great potential in its natural and indigenous resources, including delicious fresh and dry fruits, alluring gemstones, medicinal herbs and more.

However, due to the region’s extreme cold climate and its isolation from mainstream national and international markets, these valuable resources remain largely unintroduced despite their high demand. Health-conscious consumers increasingly prefer organic and indigenous products. Livelihood in the northern mountains of Pakistan is largely subsistence-oriented, with household-level agriculture—such as small-scale crop cultivation of wheat, fodder crops, orchards and animal production—forming the backbone of the household economy. Fifty percent of the population depends solely on household agriculture (HHA), while 42 percent combine it with livelihood employment, though off-farm opportunities in the Hindu Kush-Himalayan belt are limited. Some family members seek employment in Pakistan’s plains. A small fraction (six percent) is involved in local micro-enterprises like retail shops alongside HHA and only two percent engage in both farming and daily-wage labour.

In Gilgit-Baltistan region, apricots along with other deciduous fruits are primarily produced as cash crop where majority of families grow apricot. Average household has 28 trees of which nine are bearing fruit and producing 750 kilograms of apricot per annum (GOP,........

© Pakistan Observer