BHUBANESWAR: Buoyed by the success of Koraput coffee, the state government has set a target to expand cultivation of the beans by 10 times in the next five years. As a part of ‘Coffee Mission’ announced in the state budget recently, the Agriculture department has decided to expand cultivation to districts of Rayagada, Gajapati, Kalahandi, Kandhamal and Keonjhar. - under a new scheme called ‘Coffee Plantation for Sustainable Livelihoods’. At present, coffee is grown on a large scale in Koraput only.
While the scheme will be implemented in mission mode from the current financial year till 2028, the department has planned to extend it to the year 2030. Agriculture and Farmers Empowerment secretary Arabinda K Padhee said it has been planned to increase coffee cultivation in the state to nearly 40,000 hectare and coffee production to 20,800 metric tonne (MT) by 2030. While the government has made a budgetary provision of Rs 126 crore for Coffee Mission, the scheme will require around Rs 1,406 crore.
In the coffee map of India, Odisha is a non-traditional coffee growing area. As per the Coffee Board of India statistics, coffee is currently planted over 4,339 hectare of land in the state of which 4,135 hectare is coffee bearing area. Odisha produced 600 MT Arabica coffee in 2021-22 and 610 MT in 2020-21, which is less compared to Andhra Pradesh and the North East - the two other non-traditional coffee growing areas in India.
While Andhra Pradesh has 94,956 hectare under coffee cultivation, the North East has 4,695 hectare. The three non-traditional areas make up for 21 per cent of the total area in the country under coffee cultivation.
However, Odisha grows only Arabica coffee whereas Andhra and North East have some areas under Robusta cultivation.
“Under the new scheme, we will grow Robusta coffee in 20 to 25 per cent areas where the land elevation is slightly lower,” the Agriculture secretary said. He said the focus will be on tribal farmers and women self help groups (SHGs) along with private involvement as far as cultivation, production and value addition is concerned.Roughly, around 150 kg coffee beans per hectare is being produced in the state. Sources said processing of approximately 6 kg ripe coffee cherries yields 1 kg of parchment coffee.
Koraput district, one of the major coffee producing areas, grows Arabica coffee over 2,894 hectare in Koraput, Nandapur, Semiliguda, Pottangi, Dasmanthpur, Lamtaput and Laxmipur blocks. While 1,700 hectare of the land under coffee cultivation is owned by the government and provided to tribals with the average landholding size per farmer is 1.5 to 2 acre, the rest belongs to private coffee growers. The coffee grown in the district is organic in nature.