Kodagu coffee growers rue poor representation in central board
The board comprises of 33 members representing all sectors of the coffee industry who are nominated by the central government and hold office for three years.
The revamping of the coffee board by the Union government has attracted sharp criticism from the growers in the state who alleged that the authorities have “prioritised states where production of the crop is negligible.”
The board comprises of 33 members representing all sectors of the coffee industry who are nominated by the central government and hold office for three years.
The Union government has planned to repeal the 80-year-old coffee bill with Coffee (Promotion and Development Bill) 2022. The bill is under the verification of commerce ministry and yet to come up before Union cabinet.
“The Union government has unnecessarily given more prominence to Andhra Pradesh for reasons best known to them. Andhra has four members in the coffee board and the state produces only around 10,000-12,000 tonnes of coffee per annum compared to 1,12,000 tonnes produced in Kodagu yearly,” former coffee board vice president and a native of Napoklu in Kodagu, Dr Sannuvanda Kaverappa said.
Thecoffee board was formed after a delay of two months by the commerce and industries department on September 13 at the central level.
Kodagu, about 225km from Bengaluru, which accounts for 30% of all coffee produced in the country, has just one member in the board, Kaverappa said.
As per coffee board 2021-2022 statistics, Karnataka is the biggest coffee producer in India, accounting for around 70%. However, the poor representation from the southern state has left the growers from the region dejected.
“Under the instant coffee segment, the membership was given to an Andhra Pradesh-based entrepreneur by replacing the one from Karnataka. He said that the norm was that only one IAS official from the north-east would be given membership but the Union government doubled it this time,” rued Kaverappa.
“We have sent names of seven candidates , including two each from Kodagu and Hassan and three from Chikmagaluru and not even one member was selected from this list . We had even sent the name of a progressive woman coffee grower but that too was rejected. There is not a single woman in the entire board as of now,” Dr Mohan Kumar from the Karnataka Growers Federation (KGF), who represent small planters, said.
Planters fear that their problems will now fall on deaf ears as they will be left to fend for themselves especially when their problems have only compounded in recent years, making it harder to survive on a product whose prices have seen violent fluctuations as it is connected to global markets while internally few factors have changed to help their cause.
Heavy and unseasonal rains since July have led to most of the coffee dropping off the plants, which planters estimate, has led to a 30-35% decline in production.
Hassan, Chikmagalur and Kodagu which are the biggest growing coffee regions in the country account for 2,41,650 Mt production out of the total 3,42,000 Mt produced in India.
With at least 70-80% of the total produce exported globally, coffee has been among the biggest foreign exchange earning sectors.
Kaverappa said that between 2007-09, Kodagu district had at least five representatives in the board which has now been reduced to just one. The growers said that the Centre has given priority to non-traditional coffee growing regions as against the biggest growers.
“It is the decision of the Union government and is likely to be aimed at pursuing efforts to increase production of coffee in non-traditional areas,” KG Jagadeesh, the chief executive officer of the Coffee Board of India said.
He refused to comment on the poor representation in Karnataka.