VISAKHAPATNAM: Kerala Finance and Coir minister TM Thomas Isaac along with his team visited coffee plantations at Araku Valley on Sunday. They visited the Getuvalasa village coffee plantation and interacted with coffee farmers. They enquired about the farmers’ income from coffee and pepper and their children’s education, average land holding of tribal farmers in agency area and other particulars.
Further, the minister’s team visited the Nandi Foundation, the NGO, in the afternoon at Hattaguda and NF representative David gave a comprehensive power point presentation on the livelihood of people in Araku and the impact of Integrated Coffee Project. Later the Kerala team visited the newly established Eco-pulping Unit.
On the occasion, the Kerala minister addressed the coffee farmers and told them that in Kerala, most of the coffee farmers were big farmers having more than 100 acres of land. They don’t do pulping. They simply harvest the coffee, dry it to prepare cherry coffee, which does not have good quality, hence fetches less price in the market. Whereas Araku Valley farmers are small farmers and do pulping and make parchment coffee of high quality, which fetches high price, he said.