BREWING CHANGE

Once a remote, inaccessible region, Araku Valley in Andhra Pradesh now produces a world-recognised and award-winning brand, Araku Coffee. CHIRAG MOHANTY SAMAL discovers the remarkable transformation of the region led by sustainability, innovation, and community

- CHIRAG MOHANTY SAMAL

I AM NOT A FAN OF SOLO TRAVEL. But having heard of the vistas that solo travelling opens—a sense of solitude mixed with adventure and the excitement of meeting new people—I decided to try it out. My head filled with visions of Celine from Before Sunrise and Elizabeth Gilbert from Eat, Pray, Love, I began to explore a few options for my first solo trip. I didn’t have to wait long as one fine day, an opportunity to travel to the remote Araku Valley in Andhra Pradesh came up. The invitation enticingly titled The Araku Discovery Trail implored me to trace the success story of a coffee plantation that created source of livelihoods for the tribal communities of the region and put homegrown coffee on the world map.

Today, Araku Valley is the largest certified organic and biodynamic farming coffee plantation in the world. But in 1999, when Naandi Foundation (naandi.org), an NGO with developmental economist Manoj Kumar at its helm, came to the valley, not many had heard about it. Its rich biodiversity and natural beauty were undercut by its remoteness and inaccessibility. And those weren’t the only challenges. Kumar discovered there were high rates of maternal and child mortality and a lack of basic health care and schools too. The first few years, Kumar spent preparing the ground for projects. Apart from creating livelihoods for farmers, Naandi Foundation’s work in Araku spans the areas of healthcare, nutrition, and education.

Over the past two decades, Naandi has been working in Araku with 100,000 tribal farmers to grow arabica coffee sustainably. The idea has been to take steps to restore the ecology and enable direct returns from a global market thereby eliminating middlemen. These initiatives together have boosted the profitability of farmers considerably.