City: Chennai
With a large majority of coffee plantations having turned old and unproductive, coffee sector is seeking a Colombian-model re-plantation support from the government.
Abysmally low yield, lower price realisation and high levels of debt have been restraining the sector from taking up re-plantation on its own.
Re-plantation is long overdue for 65-70 per cent of India’s coffee farms. About 65 per cent of plants are more than 40 years old and for those varieties, the maximum yielding age of the plants is 35-40 years. Some of the better-yielding newer varieties have a shorter life of around 25 years and a good number of these newer varieties are also due for re-plantation, said AL RN Nagappan, coffee committee chairman of UPASI.
By retaining the older plants, both production and yield has been coming down. Coffee production, especially arabica production has been falling year-after-year in the past five years. From 120,000 tonnes, it has dropped below 90,000 tonnes.
The yield too is abysmally low. “We cannot even compare our yield with that of Brazil or Colombia. If an acre of coffee plantation provides 1.5 tonnes of coffee in Brazil, it would hardly produce 300 kg in India,’ said Nagappan. Inability to mechanise the plantations due to the hilly and rocky terrain also has been affecting the yield. According to Ramesh Rajah, president of the Coffee Exporters Association, coffee growers in the India are not in a position to take up the task of such large-scale re-plantation as most of the growers are incurring losses due to lesser price realisation and higher input cost.
“If the input cost on an acre is around Rs 70,000, the income would be around Rs 40,000 to Rs 45,000. The grower is incurring a loss of around Rs 30,000 on an acre of coffee plantation,” said Boje Gowda, chairman, Coffee Board of India.
The growers have been relying on the pepper vines to make up for the losses. “But the pepper prices too are down this year,’ added Nagappan.
According Gowda, almost 80 per cent of the growers have defaulted on their loans and the non-performing assets of the coffee plantation have become a burden for the banks.
In such a scenario, the sector is looking forward for support from the part of the central and state governments. “The government should take a leaf out of the re-plantation scheme being provided for growers in Columbia. The government has been providing financial support for the past few years and now the country has been able to enhance its production significantly,” said Rajah.
Since 2009, Colombia has been replanting around 85,000 hectares of coffee plantations every year. The government has been providing subsidy for the every replanted coffee.
“We have been requesting both central and state government to provide subsidies on the inputs like fertilizer electricity and machines,’ said Gowda.
As the grower has to forego the income during re-plantation, he also wants financial support during that critical period. “We are also expecting an interest waiver for the loans so that the growers can pay back at least the principal,” said Nagappan.
source: http://www.mydigitalfc.com / mydigitalfc.com / Home> Miscellany / by Sangeetha G
