A case of Himalayan agroforestry

The discipline of landscape architecture asks us to see land as more than its physical properties. It is a living archive of practices, beliefs, and ecological processes.
Coming from the Himalayas and studying Landscape Architecture at ETH Zurich feels like a beautiful convergence of place and perspective. It has given me a fresh perspective on a land that is deeply familiar, yet now reveals itself as a story waiting to be decoded through the sensitive lens of a landscape architect. Over the past year, I’ve realized that every lecture, every studio, somehow circles back to my hometown—reshaping how I see the land I grew up in. This summer, during a visit home, I made one such observation that I would like to share.

Located in the outer Himalayas, the district of Shimla tells a story protagonized not only by trees and soil but also by the interplay of culture, society, and shifting economies. The region’s terraced fields were once devoted to cereals — crops that could be stored through long winters when snow cut off access to fresh products. These cycles of sowing and harvest shaped not just diets but also festivals, folklore, and the seasonal rhythms of village life. Agricultural rhythms synchronized with celebrations, embedding farming into cultural traditions that continue to hold deep significance across the region. The land was not just a medium of survival; it was also a calendar of meaning.

Today, apple orchards dominate the landscape, driving an agricultural shift that has transformed both the economy and culture of the region. The organization of villages and farmers’ annual rhythms have been restructured around the phases of apple production and harvest. Old subsistence fields have been converted into revenue-generating orchards. The landscape is now tied to new infrastructures — cold storage units, packaging facilities, and export roads. In effect, the apple displaced cereals not only from the field but also from cultural imagination. Cash income replaced the security of stored grains. At first glance, apple cultivation in Shimla appears successful. The region has become a hub of high-value horticulture. Yet this economic uplift has come at a cost: fragile soils, chemical dependency, climate instability, and declining resilience. Most orchards rely heavily on pesticides and chemical fertilizers, degrading soil health over time. The widespread use of chemicals has even been linked to alarming cancer rates across Himachal Pradesh. Meanwhile, land management practices remain poor. Terraces are often left without adequate water channels or vegetation cover, leaving soils vulnerable to erosion during monsoon rains. Each year, large volumes of fertile topsoil are washed away, undermining the very resource on which the orchards depend.

This fragility is further amplified by climate change. In recent years, the region has faced erratic weather: landslides during the monsoon, prolonged droughts with forest fires, and diminishing snowfall. These extremes have triggered repeated crop failures, threatening not only the local economy but also the cultural fabric woven around apple cultivation. Yet the dominant mindset remains focused on short-term productivity. Each year’s harvest is prioritized over long-term resilience. Farmers — many entirely dependent on orchards — rarely have the bandwidth or resources to consider ecological consequences. This extractive relationship with land risks exhausting both soil and the society that has emerged around apple cultivation.

Shimla’s agroforestry is not merely an agricultural system but a landscape narrative in transition. The shift from cereals to apples represents more than a change of crops; it is a reconfiguration of culture, ecology, and economy. The present challenges — soil degradation, erosion, chemical dependence, climate vulnerability — are not isolated problems but interconnected symptoms of a living landscape under stress.
How can the discipline of landscape architecture bridge these layers — situating ecological observations within cultural history, aligning technical solutions with community practices, and envisioning futures that are both resilient and grounded in place? Orchards can be seen as more than fields of production. They are landscapes in flux, sites where history, culture, economy, and ecology converge. To view them only through the lens of yield is to overlook their deeper significance — a neglect that has led to their present vulnerability.

As a student of landscape architecture, my reflection on Shimla’s agroforestry is both a critique and an invitation. It is a critique of practices that prioritize short-term gains over long-term resilience, but also an invitation to imagine alternatives — to see orchards as living landscapes capable of regeneration. This article is only a beginning. To truly understand and reshape the future of agroforestry in Shimla requires deeper research, collaborative inquiry, and community engagement. Yet even at this early stage, one lesson is clear: agriculture, when situated within the larger web of cultural landscapes, becomes more than a means of production. It becomes a mirror of how people live with land — and a guide for how they might live differently in the future.


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