Asia Times 27 February 2004
(http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/FB27Df05.html)
NEW DELHI - After a drop in export earnings by 16.5 percent over the past three years, Indian coffee planters have shed their stoicism following the increase in global coffee prices and are ready to enter the "speciality coffee market" in the United States.
With Roberta coffee futures at the London International Financial Exchange shooting up US$14 per ton and $0.75 per pound weight on the New York Board of Trade, there is reason for optimism among the coffee growers in India. As such, additional efforts are being taken to look beyond the traditional European markets of Italy, Germany, Belgium and Spain.
Last year, India, which holds a 4 percent share of the global coffee market, worth $245 million, exported 23.46 percent of its coffee to Italy - currently the largest consumer of Indian coffee - followed by 16.13 percent to Germany, 9.49 percent to Russia, 7 percent to Belgium and 3.05 percent to the US, which imports a higher share of Indian coffee than the United Kingdom's bare 0.24 percent. Upbeat planters and roasters believe that in a year's time they will be able to double their exports to the US without diluting their market shares in Europe and Russia.
The new strategy involves working with US roasters, encouraging eco-plantation tourism, which promotes environmental conservation, and working toward brand establishment in the US, as suggested by US roasters attending the First India International Coffee Festival, concluded February 18 in Karnataka, India's coffee heartland. Karnataka produces the bulk of India's share of the global coffee market, and 90 percent of India's coffee is grown in the three states of Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu. Karnataka's Nilgiri Hills region produces more Robasta variety than Arabica, whereas Tamil Nadu produces more Arabica. Andhra Pradesh, Orissa and the Northeastern hill areas of Assam and Nagaland produce only 3,600 tons of coffee a year.
India's coffee exports in 2003 were estimated at around 220,000 tons, up from 213,000 for the year before. In spite of this fluctuation, the country's exports growth remained relatively meager, partly due to lower production and falling prices in Germany, Belgium and Spain, and also due to shifting markets - from the Russian Republic to Italy. Although the 11.7 percent rise in exports to Italy helped offset a 14.7 percent decline in exports to Russia, saving Indian coffee from going under, there was only a marginal increase in export earnings.
But it appears things may change for the better in 2004, as Indian coffee, for the first time, received a AA-rating from John Gant, the globally reputed "Master Taster". The Indian Coffee Board, an autonomous body functioning under India's Ministry of Commerce and Industry, wants to ride with Gant's certificate and embark on a bold experiment to promote in the US coffee grown by the tribal people of the Nilgiri Hills (Blue Mountains) in south India.
India hopes the non-hybridized tribal coffee, grown on mountain slopes without any chemical fertilizer, may become a favorite of US consumers, who a pay higher price for organic coffee with less caffeine. The objective is to rope in the environmental lobby in the US as well as to cater to the most discerning of consumers. "The concept of niche or boutique coffee is determined not on the basis of quantity, but consistent quality against the backdrop of the environmental well being of the region where it is grown with an eye to the socio-economic benefit to the cultivator," says an Indian Coffee Board official.
As such, India expects double benefits from the sale of tribal coffee, as this will divert more than 30,000 tribal people in the Arku Valley in Andhra Pradesh from their slash and burn cultivation that leads to soil erosion and destroys the hills, while at the same time allowing for the production of coffee beans of consistent quality from the 14,100 hectares being cultivated by them; a significant step in a country that loses $1.85 billion annually in farm output due to soil erosion.
The Blue Mountains have been the natural home of Indian coffee since it was introduced 450 years ago with seven seeds brought from Yemen by Baba Budan, a Muslim pilgrim and planted at his hermitage in Dattatreya Peetha, at the headwaters of the Cauvery River in southern India. But despite its early beginnings, coffee didn't became an established crop until sometime between 1825-1850, when it was harvested in the Western Ghats (India's West coast mountain range).
From the beginning Indian coffee was shade dependent because of a combination of the length of the dry season following the monsoon, as well as the altitude. Arabicas, India's primary coffee crop, generally require managed primary and secondary shade layers offered by 24 types of shade trees commonly grown on coffee estates; long recognized as a pest control practice. Usually there are silver oaks, entwined with pepper vines, or with borders of cardamom, vanilla, antherea and betel nut trees. In the current market, these alternate crops are sustaining losses from low coffee returns and the estates are taking a marginal beating. However, these typically stoic farmers have continued in their dedication to quality coffee production.
This level of attention goes as far back as 1892, says Dr S Menon of the United Planters Association, the organization of Indian coffee planters. He says that by 1925, India had established a full-time Coffee Experimental Station to work against rust infestation by hybridizing. It became the Central Coffee Research Institute (CCRI) of the Coffee Board in 1946. Eighty of the 130 acres at CCRI contain what may be the largest gene pool of coffee in the world: 17 different species of the genus Eucoffea, hundreds of C Arabica types, and 15 types of C Canephora (Robusta). There are examples of the dark purple-black cherries of the exotic Sierra Leone species, stenophylla - a coffee Ukers found superior to Arabica, and of the huge green leaves of liberica, which come from dwarf trees, serious contenders for production since they would cut pruning and harvest costs. CCRI has developed 12 Arabica and 3 Robusta hybrids, all of which are commercially significant as these types of coffee account for 80 percent of India's coffee production.
But hold on, there is more to it says the Speciality Coffee Association of America (SCAA), as it refers to the long process before Indian coffee can establish itself in the US market and move beyond its current 3.05 percent market share. According to a SCAA delegation member, the first stage involves creating awareness, followed by trials and then sampling, as speciality coffee is defined as such not by the sellers but by buyers who rate the coffee according to its unique taste and consistent quality. India has already set up the Speciality Coffee Association of India (SCAI), a guild of coffee roasters who will work to maintain consistent quality in their products and serve as a watchdog body.
In efforts to prove that Indian coffee conforms to internationally held standards, most of the delegates who attended the First India international conference confirmed that Indian cherries are hand-sorted before pulping and match the level of Euro-prep finish, meaning reds that are entirely uniform in color and size. In addition, delegates said that the drying patios they use are classically ordered with whitewashed barriers, greens are raked in the geometric patterns, and wastewater from pulping and washing is treated for clarification according to state regulations. There are also required labor standards for adults and children within the estates, for housing, schooling, pensions and medical care, all of which make Indian coffee fair-trade production.
With its quality standard's and Gant's AA-rating of approval, it seems that Indian coffee's expansion has little to lose. After testing the 17 varieties of India's shaded coffee, here's what Gant wrote to the Indian Coffee Board: "I have gone through over 50 samples, 250 cups in two six-hour marathon sessions - a lot of Indian coffee! It's partly because of the array, and as much because of my initial reaction to one set of samples, Robustas. I'm jarred when I come to the traditional dogma: there is no 'R' in specialty coffee!" He certified that India's Robustas roast differently, and that unlike other coffee, "there was no sudden flight of silverskin and no proportioned 'pops' of roast development, as with Arabicas. And these Rs were anything but mild - more wild and wilder, mimicking some of the grand cru character of great Yemen or Ethiopian, the heavy vanilla, honey and fruit dry aroma, becoming more fruity, verging on beefy-musty-tobacco when wet and very intense. Little else in the coffee world compares to this lingering intensity. Maybe Java Blawans, or the Sulawesi Torajas, but those are heavy, ponderous. The India Rs that perform at this level are probably in the class of Kaapi Royale, the top screen and sort."
Yet not everyone in India is quite as optimistic. Dr Basavaraj, director at the Quality Evaluation and Upgradation Center outside Bangalore, who has cupped with the largest of the Italian and Euro-style roasters, says apparently it seems almost impossible for Indian speciality coffees to make an impression on US consumers but that should not prevent Indian planters and roasters from trying. The world over there is a growing market for "socially responsible and environmentally sound sustainable coffee", he says, adding that India can easily cash in on the growing American demand for "Song Bird Coffee", grown south of the US in the shade of trees where birds sing.
(Copyright 2004 Asia Times Online Ltd.)