Billing for your organic store in Jammu and Kashmir
Saffron by the gram, walnuts by the kilo, and certified stock kept apart from the rest.
Why a Kashmir organic shelf weighs saffron in grams and walnuts in sacks
A gram of saffron beside a sack of rice
Saffron is sold in grams, sometimes less than a gram, in tiny boxes. Next to it on the same shelf are rice and walnuts sold by the kilo. A customer who buys all three wants one bill, and you have to weigh the saffron on a fine scale, the walnuts on the big one and then add up two kinds of rate in your head.
Is it organic, and how do you show it
Buyers ask whether the rice, the honey or the spices are organic, and some only buy certified stock. The same grain in a sack with and without a certificate looks identical on the shelf. If both go onto one slip, a month later nobody can say how much of the certified lot is left.
The autumn nut crop that ties up the money
Walnuts and almonds come in sacks after the harvest, and you pay the growers when they bring them. The money goes out at once and comes back over the winter, through gifts and festival boxes and the visitors of the next season. A box packed for a gift in January is the last of the money from the autumn's sack.
The orchards and fields behind a Kashmir organic shelf
What an organic shelf in Jammu and Kashmir holds comes from fields and orchards like these.
- Baramulla is the largest producer of horticulture products in J&K, with vast apple orchards.
- Most people in Kupwara depend on agriculture and horticulture, and walnuts are a major product and business of the district.
- Agriculture is central to Anantnag district's economy: in 2019-20, 64.56% of the reporting area was under agriculture.
- Jammu city's Narwal fruit and vegetable mandi was upgraded between 2021 and 2023 with improved sheds, a Mandi Plaza building and a 100-tonne weighbridge.
Tools for a shop that sells a gram of saffron and a sack of rice
Godown stock
What came in from each grower and which godown it went to, so the autumn crop can be read back by the pile.
Orders to suppliers
An order to the grower for next season's walnuts, with a note of what arrives and on which day.
Online orders
A page of your own organic goods that someone in another city opens to order a gift box of walnuts and dried fruit for his family here.
From the pinch of saffron to the godown full of the autumn nut crop
Saffron billed in grams
Set saffron as an item sold by the gram and walnuts as an item sold by the kilo. A customer who buys two grams and half a kilo is buying in two scales at once, and each rate is told in its own unit, so two grams of saffron are never charged like two grams of walnuts.
Certified lot and ordinary lot never on one bill
Make the certified rice and the ordinary rice two separate items, each with its own count. When a buyer asks for the certified one, you can tell him how much is left, and a bill never mixes the two lots.
The autumn crop counted godown by godown
Note each growers' lot as it arrives and which godown it went to. Through the winter, you see what is left in each godown and in the shop, so a gift-box order in the festival week is answered at once instead of after a walk to the back.
Farm groups whose stalls and online shop share one stock list
Questions Kashmir organic shops ask
A houseboat owner takes dry fruit and walnuts for his guests through the season and pays when it ends. Can his page carry that?
Yes. Open a page in his name and put each bill on it with its day, the walnuts and the dry fruit as separate lines. The page shows what he has taken and what he owes. When he pays at the season's end, note the payment on the same page, and next season starts from a clean count.
A grower brings walnuts in autumn and I pay him then. Can I note what each grower brought?
Yes. Write the grower's name with each lot of walnuts when you pay him. Walnut sacks are paid for on arrival, and through the winter the stock shows how many are still unsold.
A visitor wants the same gift box sent again next winter. How do I find what was in it?
Open the visitor's page and last winter's bill. It lists the walnuts and the dry fruit with their weights, so you pack the same box again and make the new bill beside it.
The first organic store in Jammu and the saffron growers of Pulwama
J&K's first organic food store, Nimbark, opened in May 2017 at Channi Himmat, Jammu, stocking more than 100 organic items from rice to spices. It shows that a whole shop can be built round the one question buyers ask, and a shop that follows it keeps each item apart by name.
In August 2023 the J&K Trade Promotion Organization handed organic certificates to Pulwama saffron growers under NPOP, and officials urged organic certification for cherries, garlic and apples too. The certificate goes with the grower's lot, so a shop that buys from certified growers has a reason to keep that lot apart.