JOIN US This has been happening over the last few years leaving coffee growers in dire straits.
Kalasa hobli, which has the honour of being the place producing superior class robusta coffee beans has seen fall in coffee beans production this year. The production has gone down by 20 to 30 per cent when compared to last year. However, over coming various adverse factors like crop disease, shortage of farm workers etc, the growers have successfully completed plucking of beans but this is not of much help to them anyways because by the time the growers could complete curing works the price has dropped to the rates that existed four years ago.
The fall in the price of coffee has brought great disappointment to growers, who had thought of making some profits and clearing off large part of their loans. Just a few days ago the price of one bag of coffee of 50 kgs was Rs 2000 but now the price has dropped to Rs 1600.
While small growers who have to manage the farms by selling the existing produce are set to sell the crops right away, big growers say that they feel it is feasible to wait for some more time for the price to go up.
Amidst all these, the healthy cost of robusta parchment coffee has brought silver lining for growers and hence they feel that the cherries may fetch good price some time soon in future. The coffee dealers say that since parchment coffee has demand in export market, its costs have not fallen.
There is a feeling that the priceof the cherries fell this year because of the borer affected beans of last year. This year though there was no berry borer disease in the plants, the price fell and growers suspect that it is the handy work of the coffee dealers.
Growers say that the coffee production has depleted globally including Brazil, hence the cost of coffee should have gone up. Since the pricehave reduced, the growers hold exporters and businessmen responsible for the same.
On one hand the growers are somehow eking out a living amidst all problems and on the other hand the government too is not showing any interest in releasing special package for coffee. The growers are waiting for the day when the coffee market will be released from the clutches of invisible hands controlling the prices and when they will have a sigh of relief.
DH News Service