KOCHI: A Dutch team is visiting Kerala next week offering coffee farmers in Wayanad a helping hand in finding a robust market in The Netherlands, and to impart lessons on generating more income even as they resort to carbon-neutral programmes.
The expert team will talk to farmers in Meenangadi, India’s first carbon-neutral panchayat, to convince them that it’s possible to generate more income using “negative emission technologies” by planting trees in their coffee plantations. The team will also assure them a robust market in the European nation for the coffee beans and powder.
The team comprising representatives from Climate Institute TU Delft, The Netherlands, Energy and Sustainability Research Institute Groningen, Groningen University, and Rabo Bank of The Netherlands, which specialises in agri-finance will also meet Industries Minister P Rajeeve and senior bureaucrats. The Netherlands Ambassador to India will lead the team, said sources. The group is also trying for a meeting with Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan. Coffee experts from MVO Nederland, a movement for entrepreneurs, will be part of the team.
The sources said there is a significant change in the earlier proposal for the ‘Coffee Park’ in Wayanad announced by former finance minister Thomas Isaac in his 2019 budget. Now, it has been decided to confine the proposed park to just 15 acres against the earlier plan of 100 acres. The key component of the Coffee Park is a central coffee processing unit. “This can be easily accommodated in 15 acres.
The Kerala Development and Innovation Strategic Council (K-Disc) is driving the coffee project, which is supported by KIIFB. South America’s arabica coffee, preferred across the world, is facing erratic production due to climate change. In comparison, the robusta variety is sturdier. While Vietnam robusta coffee is well-known, Wayanad robusta coffee is far better in quality, but lags in popularity. The programme devised by the team is to propel Wayanad in the global export market as a standalone regional coffee producer, sources said.
P V Aravind, professor and chair of Energy Conversion, University of Groningen, said the idea is to drive home the point that it is possible to generate income for farmers while they go for the carbon-neutral programme. Farmers will be compensated for the short-term losses caused by planting trees in coffee plantations. Their biggest fear is that there will be loss of yield from coffee when other trees are planted. This is not true, he said.
The experts will also present to farmers the expected revenue and the sequestration potential of jackfruit/coffee-based agroforestry systems to demonstrate an alternative approach to strengthen the coffee-growing regions of Wayanad in the face of climate change. In a paper lead-authored by Aravind, it is said the Meenangadi programme is potentially replicable in many other villages in the Wayanad district (and elsewhere).
“The entire carbon-neutrality project in Meenangadi will not make sense if it does not make financially benefit farmers,” Aravind said. Officials said aHOPE, a tech-platform for aggregation of coffee and other produce from small farmers which will have tie-up with Federal Bank for working capital finance for farmers is also a key component in the project.
Coffee production in 2019-20
Kerala: 64,125 tonnes
Wayanad: 55,225 tonnes
Robusta coffee is cultivated in 67,366 hectares in Wayanad
There are 59,621 coffee farmers in Wayanad