Srinagar, May 28 -- The sun was still climbing over the ridges of Gurez when I stepped onto a potato field, soft with dew and dark with life. A farmer knelt beside me, his fingers moving through the soil like someone reading an old, familiar story. He didn't say much, but his silence carried the same confidence I'd once heard in the voice of Nazir Ahmad Gurezi, a senior lawmaker who stood here in 2017 and declared that Gurez could be Kashmir's organic capital.

"This place has everything it needs," Nazir had said then. And he wasn't wrong.

There's something unspoiled about Gurez. The land is high, the air is sharp, and the soil-untouched by years of chemicals-is ready. Nazir's dream was to grow clean food here: peas, potatoes, and promis...