Nobody Agrees How Much Saffron Kashmir Produces
Four official-sounding sources give four different production figures for the same years. One says 19.58 tonnes. Another says 2.6.
Four official-sounding sources give four different production figures for the same years. One says 19.58 tonnes. Another says 2.6.
We are not going to tell you which is right. We are going to put them next to each other, because seeing them together is the useful part.
The four series
One government series, by year:
- 17.33 MT in 2020-21
- 14.87 MT in 2021-22
- 14.94 MT in 2022-23
- 23.53 MT in 2023-24
- 19.58 MT in 2024-25
Another official figure quoted in the press: around 8 MT in 2010-11, falling to 2.6 MT in 2023-24.
A growers' association reported the 2025 season at 10 to 15 percent of normal.
And a widely repeated figure puts the long-run average at 11 to 12 MT.
Read those again. The first series has 2023-24 at 23.53 MT. The second has the same year at 2.6 MT. That is not a rounding difference. It is a factor of nine.
These cannot all be true
At least some of these numbers are measuring different things, and nothing in how they are published tells you which.
Plausible sources of the gap, none of which we can confirm:
- What counts as production. Flowers harvested, stigmas separated, or finished dried saffron are three different quantities.
- Dry weight against wet weight. Saffron loses most of its mass in drying, and a figure that does not say which it is can be off by a large multiple.
- Whose survey. A department estimate built from area multiplied by an assumed yield is a different instrument from a count of what growers actually sold.
- Which area is counted. The crop sits across Pampore, Budgam, Srinagar and a small area in Kishtwar, and a series covering some of those is not comparable with one covering all.
We are speculating in that list, and we want to be clear that we are. The published figures do not explain themselves.
The direction of travel is not in doubt
One thing survives the disagreement.
The growing area is shrinking and the yield per hectare is rising. Both figures, and what they do to the arithmetic of how much genuine Kashmiri saffron can exist, are set out in why most Kashmiri saffron sold online is not Kashmiri. Which of the two wins in the total is precisely what the conflicting production figures cannot tell us.
So a claim that production is collapsing and a claim that production is recovering can both find support. That should make you cautious about either.
Growers against departments
The growers' association figure for 2025, at 10 to 15 percent of normal, is the one that sits furthest from the official series.
That is not automatically the truer number. A trade body reporting a bad year has its own reasons to report it loudly, the same way a department has reasons to report a recovery. Both can be honest and still disagree, because they are counting different things at different points in the chain.
What is notable is that nobody reconciles them publicly.
Why a buyer should care
This is the part that is not academic.
If nobody can measure the supply, then nobody can verify a claim about the supply. A seller who tells you their saffron is from a record harvest, or from a failed one that justifies a price rise, is citing a number that four sources disagree about.
It also means the arithmetic argument about how much genuine Kashmiri saffron can possibly exist has a wide error bar on it. The conclusion still holds, because even the highest figure here is small against global demand. But anyone quoting a precise tonnage at you, including us, should be treated as quoting one source out of several.
How to read the next figure you see
When a production number turns up in an article or on a product page, three questions make it useful or expose it.
- Dried finished saffron, or something earlier in the chain?
- Which years, and which districts?
- Who measured it, and by what method?
Most published figures answer none of the three. That does not make them wrong. It makes them unusable for comparison, which is the only thing anyone wants them for.
Why we are not resolving it
We could pick the series that suits us. A low production figure makes scarcity arguments easier and supports a higher price. A high one makes the crop look like it is recovering.
Both would be a choice dressed up as a fact, and you would have no way to tell which we had done. We would rather publish the disagreement and let it sit there, because a reader who knows the figures conflict is better equipped than a reader who has been handed one of them confidently.
If that makes this page less quotable than a single tidy number, so be it.
What we would want instead
A single published series that states its basis: dried finished saffron, measured at this point, by this method, for this area. It may exist and we have not found it. If you know of one, we would genuinely like to see it.
Until then the honest position is the one on this page. The figures conflict, the conflict is not explained, and anyone presenting one of them as settled fact has picked a source without telling you.