Saffron’s Last Gasp |
Where cuisine conquers all. Read more from the series.
Mohammad Altaf Dar arranges tiny glass vials on a wooden shelf inside his shop at Lal Chowk, a city square in Srinagar, Jammu and Kashmir. Each vial contains crimson threads of saffron, worth more than their weight in silver.
For three decades, this shop has supplied Srinagar’s households and tourist hotels with the world’s most expensive spice. Now Dar faces an unprecedented predicament.
Mohammad Altaf Dar arranges tiny glass vials on a wooden shelf inside his shop at Lal Chowk, a city square in Srinagar, Jammu and Kashmir. Each vial contains crimson threads of saffron, worth more than their weight in silver.
For three decades, this shop has supplied Srinagar’s households and tourist hotels with the world’s most expensive spice. Now Dar faces an unprecedented predicament.
Iran produces more than 90 percent of the world’s saffron in the vast fields of Khorasan. It has long been a quiet backbone of supply for traders across South Asia. In Kashmir, where local saffron harvests have declined in recent years, many retailers have increasingly relied on Iranian imports to keep their businesses afloat and meet demand from tourists and export buyers.
Dar’s last shipment of Iranian saffron sits delayed at a port in Dubai, caught in the crossfire of a conflict that exploded across the Middle East two months ago. The Strait of Hormuz has become a dangerous chokepoint, and Iranian exports have slowed down.
Meanwhile, Kashmir’s own saffron harvest all but collapsed this past autumn, yielding barely 20 percent of normal output, according to farmers in Pampore, the saffron bowl south of Srinagar.
Kashmiri farmers collect saffron from their fields on the outskirts of Srinagar, Jammu and Kashmir, on Oct. 19, 2006.Irshad Khan/AFP via Getty Images
Official figures paint a grim picture: Production slipped to 19.58 metric tons in 2024-25, down from 23.53 metric tons the previous year. Some growers say the reality was far worse, with many fields producing almost nothing during the October-November flowering season. The Karewa plateaus, where purple saffron crocus blooms have colored the autumn landscape for centuries, offered only bare soil last fall.
Kashmir contributes less than 1 percent of the global market by volume, but commands respect among connoisseurs for an entirely different reason. Kashmiri saffron contains higher concentrations of crocin, the carotenoid pigment responsible for the spice’s distinctive color, measuring 8.72 percent compared to the Iranian variety’s 6.82 percent.
The local Mongra grade displays a dark maroon-purple hue that indicates potent flavor and aroma. Iranian saffron is drier, more commercially available, and historically much cheaper than the Kashmiri variant.
Workers sort and clean saffron filaments during processing at a Novin Saffron factory in Iran’s Khorasan province on Nov. 12, 2018. Atta Kenare/AFP via Getty Images
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