Climate change will have adverse impact on coffee sector

Climate change would have an adverse impact on India’s coffee sector, a top official warned today as he called for mitigation strategies, improved farming practices and better post-harvesting technologies to meet the challenge.

“The coffee sector faces major challenges in climate change,” Karnataka’s Chief Secretary S V Ranganath, previously chairman of state-run Coffee Board of India, said here. Global warming, as a result of climate change, would lead to challenges for the coffee sector in terms of a decrease in quality because of early ripening, lower yields in view of rising temperature and increase in metabolism of the coffee plant and pests and diseases, he said.

With an increase in temperature, planters have to invest on irrigation, among others, which is bound to reduce their profitability, Ranganath told the the 52nd annual general meeting of the Karnataka Planters’ Association here. Karnataka accounts for around 70 per cent of India’s coffee production.

India is projected to produce 308,000 tonnes of coffee in the present fiscal, up from 289,600 tonnes in the previous fiscal. For Karnataka, the estimation for 2010-11 is 219,625 tonnes against the harvest of 205,700 tonnes last year. Ranganath said: “In the era of climate change, what we need is adaptation, mitigation strategies, improved farming practices as well as better post-harvesting technologies”.