The National Coffee Board has come up with a proposal to double India’s coffee production over the next 10 years by increasing productivity in traditional growing states and bringing about 2 lakh hectares of new cultivation to non-traditional areas. Coffee was traditionally grown in Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu, while the plantation crop has penetrated the non-traditional regions of Andhra Pradesh, Odisha and the Northeast in recent years.
Coffee Board Secretary and Managing Director K G Jagadeesha said the board is proposing a two-pronged approach to double production by 2033. We are looking at a national replanting policy for traditional states where coffee plants in about 60 percent of the area have passed their economic age. Arabica plants are starting to decline in 40 years, Robusta in 50 years. If we do not undertake replanting in those states where it has passed the economic age, our harvest will inevitably decline. We can grow almost 50 percent of our produce by replanting old and old plants.
To satisfy interest
Under the proposal, the government will be reimbursed over five years for interest costs on loans used by farmers to replant traditional areas. The government has sent the proposal to the Ministry of Commerce and is waiting for the approval of the government. Currently, coffee is cultivated on about 4,72,000 hectares and the production in 2022-2023 was 3,60,000 tons. India’s coffee production has more than doubled over the past three decades from about 1.69 million tons in the early 1990s, and the government aims to double productivity in the next decade by improving productivity. Jagadeesha further said that the proposed expansion of land area by about two million hectares in non-traditional areas will be implemented through subsidies to farmers in collaboration with the countries concerned. The Center proposes to share the burden of support for the expansion of the new region equally among the states.
Odisha Mission
Jagadeesha said that Odisha has already announced its mission to bring about 1,000 hectares under coffee by 2030. About 80,000 hectares of coffee is imported in Andhra Pradesh, while cultivation can be expanded to about 25,000 hectares in Tamil Nadu and another 50,000-60 hectares. In the northeast. “All these areas, if we can lower the coffee, we can improve the production”. India, which exports about two-thirds of the coffee produced in the country, will host the 25-28. World Coffee Congress (WCC 2023) in Bengaluru in September and the event is expected to showcase Indian coffee to global buyers.