Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level : Not Much
Mains level : Coffee Cultivation in India
- To bring world coffee producers, including Indian growers, out of this appalling situation, The World Coffee Producers Forum has decided to reach out to the coffee consuming countries around the world.
Coffee consumption drive
- India, which has a domestic consumption of more than 5 million bags (of 60 kg each)
- India will plan and roll out a coffee consumption campaign on behalf of global coffee growers who suffered huge financial losses on account of falling coffee prices and soaring labour cost.
- As a precursor India will kick off a five-year coffee consumption campaign in collaboration with top global roasters including Nestle and Starbucks, cafe chains, other stakeholders and the GoI.
- A special entity would be formed to execute this country-wide coffee campaign.
- The plan is to get most of the funding from international roasters while ICO will play a catalyst’s role.
- The campaign will address a population of 450 million, mostly school and college students, in India. C
Why this move?
- The context is that coffee growers around the globe are going paupers and turning poverty stricken.
- As per International Coffee Organization (ICO), 25 million farmers, including more than 3,00,000 in India, produce coffee in 60 counties.
- Over 90% of these growers are smallholders and are forced to sell their coffees at a price much below the cost of production.
- This scenario has led to socio-economic issues. These growers and their families have gone deeper into debts. Many even have abandoned their farms and migrated to cities.
Addressing demand-supply issue
- There is a huge demand-supply imbalance that currently exists in the global coffee markets.
- That’s the root cause for price fall. Increasing the consumption is the only way to counter this and therefore demand for the commodity in the global markets will increase.
- The plan is to import excess coffees from Brazil, Colombia and Vietnam, provided the government of India waives off the import duty on coffee which is 105%.