Madikeri: Coffee planters in Kodagu are still suffering from the effects of incessant rainfall and landslides of August 2018 and 2019 that resulted in loss of topsoil, crops and yield.

Apart from low yield, spotty summer showers, planters are also facing an acute shortage of labour to pluck beans as most of workers that come from North-Eastern States have not arrived yet due to spread of Coronavirus pandemic. Adding to the woes is low pricing for coffee procured by traders.

In the light of this, Hotteyanda Parvathi Fancy, President of Madikeri Mahila Congress, has urged the State and Central Governments to come to the rescue of coffee planters. 

She stated that even though coffee has been one of the biggest foreign exchange earners for the country, the recent Union Government Budget has disappointed coffee growers as they have been ignored. 

The Government must fix the Minimum Support Price (MSP) for coffee and pepper, and announce a special package to bail them out of the current crisis. Parvathi Fancy has urged Chief Minister B.S. Yediyurappa to take note of their travails and provide succour to them in the State Budget.

Further, she said, “Robusta coffee has hit a record low price for the first time in the last 25 years. With the current price, growers are unable to maintain coffee plantations and this has been a matter of concern. A 50-kg bag of Robusta cherry bean hardly fetches Rs. 2,900 to Rs. 3,100. With this current price, they will incur heavy losses since the costs of production have gone up considerably. They spend Rs. 60,000 to Rs. 1 lakh on maintenance of coffee plants per acre. Even if they get 20 bags of coffee beans per acre, still it is a huge loss for them. In the coming days, they might be compelled to stop coffee plantation as they have done for paddy.”

Natural calamities, untimely rainfall, wild animal menace, high maintenance costs and other such problems have made the life of growers miserable, she bemoaned.

She wanted the elected representatives of the Kodagu raise this issue in Legislative Assembly or Legislative Council or Parliament to draw attention of the Governments. This may help in providing solution to many long-pending problems of coffee growers, she added.

Collect data of backyard coffee

While Parvathi Fancy has made a strong case for Minimum Support Price for coffee as in Kerala, to make her case further strong she should get data of coffee growers who depend just on 1 or 2, or 3 or 4 or 5 or even 6 acres of coffee plantations (backyard coffee). After collecting the data of cultivation and income from the plantation, the Government must be informed on how thousands of small growers are struggling to make ends meet. —Ed