Coffee planters advised to go for value addition

Observing that India was yet to become major player in volumes market, specially the premium price fetching Arabica market, as also both washed and cherry varieties of Robust, Joshi, addressing the KPA-UPASI Coffee Conference, noted the biggest challenge before country’s plantation community was to enhance coffee production which has not grown in sizeable measure being stagnant at around 3.22 lakh tonne mark since 2000-01.

With global coffee production quite tight and supplies unable to keep up with rising consumption demand, she said, past three years has witnessed unprecedented rise in coffee prices, which, the Indian domestic players should make the most of it. Coffee enterprises, she observed, must sustain their businesses despite increased labour and input costs and vagrant weather conditions, by taking to mechanisation and replanting of coffee varieties and boosting productivity in a big way.

Emphasis, she said, must be on quality of bean by taking to manufacturing coffees through diversification and value-addition. The Centre, she said, was currently formulating its policy for plantation sector in the 12th Five Year Plan based on the variety of reports from several agencies including Indian Institute of Plantation Management as also University of Agricultural Sciences, Bangalore.

Stating the Centre was seized of the industry’s issues and demands, she said, the policy would ensure there are several new schemes for the sector besides the exisiting ones which would be extended from their current time period. The ministry is also examining higher allocation for the coffee sector in the 12th Plan, she added.

Concurring, Coffee Board Chairman Jawaid Akhtar, said if the country was to maintain its share of exports, while concurrently meet the domestic market requirements, efforts were necessary to increase the production to about 5 per cent, which, he opined was a big challenge.

Observing that it was imperative the sectoral players made appropriate investments for long-term productivity improvements through replanting of unproductive, senile Arabica coffee blocks and creation of irrigation facilities for Robusta coffee, he said, efforts must be made to produce high quality coffee to enhance country’s coffees edge.

He also stressed the need to beef up productivity which was at a low of 838 kg/hectare, and whose CAGR was -2.05 per cent and -1.72 per cent for Arabica and Robusta respectively, thereby be able to meet both growth domestic coffee consumption which was clocking a 5-6 per cent growth rate, as also global consumption which was seeing growth at 2 per cent per annum.