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Kerala, Karnataka flood to have long-term impact on coffee growers
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SME Times News Bureau | 14 Sep, 2018
The devastating floods in Kerala and Karnataka will not just cause
one-fifth of the coffee production to be wiped out this year but its
aftershocks are expected to have a long-term negative impact on farmers.
Ruined
plantations would take several years to return to life and a part of
those that survived might die due to the rotting of their roots. One
estimate places the losses in three districts of Karnataka alone at Rs
700 crore.
There will also be a huge financial bearing on the
beleaguered farmers to arrange resources for recovery of the damaged
trees and re-establish the dead coffee gardens, Ramesh Rajah, President
of the Coffee Exporters Association of India, said.
"According to
the Coffee Board, about 1,000 hectares of coffee garden area have been
flattened due to the landslides triggered by the heavy rains. Every big
tree in (shed-grown) plantations that has fallen has damaged at least
10-20 coffee trees," Rajah told IANS.
Before the monsoon, the
total coffee output for this year was pegged at over 3.5 lakh tonnes.
However, the estimates have been brought down to 2.8-3 lakh tonnes post
the flash-floods-led disaster in both southern states.
According
to the Coffee Board of India, the total production of coffee in 2015-16
was 3.48 lakh tonnes while it was estimated to be 3.12 lakh tonnes in
2016-17.
Rajah said there were fears that some of the coffee
trees that survived the floods might "die slowly" due to the
root-rotting as they were submerged for a long time.
Karnataka
Revenue Minister R.V. Deshpande said the coffee plantations on 2.26 lakh
hectares of land were affected, leading to huge losses to the farmers.
"Coffee
plantations in Kodagu, Hassan and Chikmagalur have been badly damaged.
The Coffee Board is assessing the magnitude of the damage. But the
tentative figures show the losses are around Rs 700 crore," Deshpande
told IANS.
According to sources, the central government is
working on a special package for the cultivators based on the
recommendations of the Commerce Ministry even as the Coffee Board is
assessing the overall damage caused.
Karnataka accounts for 70-80
per cent of the country's total coffee production while Kerala produces
over 10 per cent and Tamil Nadu about 5 per cent. Andhra Pradesh,
Odisha and the northeastern region, which come under the non-traditional
coffee producing areas, account for the rest.
Arabica and Robusta are the two types of coffee grown in India.
B.M.
Raju, who grows coffee beans on 60-acres of land in Karnataka's Kodagu,
said the damage in his district ranged from 20 to 80 per cent and
farmers would have no option but to reinvest heavily to rejuvenate their
gardens.
"The input cost is already high. Labour cost has
increased in last few years. But after these floods, coffee cultivators
are totally broken. We will have to raise a huge sum for replantation,"
said Raju, who is a member of the Coffee Board.
The input cost includes expenses on seedlings, labour, irrigation, fertilisers, pesticides and chemicals.
Rajah said farmers had the "financial inability" to raise funds as they were already in distress.
Even
if the cultivators manage to gather resources and carry out
replantation, they will have to wait for at least five years for the
returns when trees start bearing fruit.
Earlier, farmers would
get 75-85 bags (each of 60 kg) of coffee beans per hectare. However,
this time it would be just 12-25 bags in Kodagu, Raju said.
According to the Coffee Board, the overall farm productivity was 761 kg per hectare in 2016-17.
Rajah said the quality of coffee beans would not be good this year as their shape may not be round and the texture may be rough.
But
K. Basavaraj, who heads the Coffee Board's Quality Division, maintained
that the quality would not be affected as the fruit development would
happen after the rains.
"There would not be any impact on the
bean quality in general. We have 3-4 months for recovery of plants and
development of beans. Quality could be slightly below the normal in
certain pockets where serious damage has been reported," Basavaraj said.
He
said plants in the minimal damage areas would recover by the next year
but some pockets, especially in Kodagu where entire coffee estates have
vanished, would take years to rebuild.
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