INDIAN COFFEE BLOSSOMS

Indian planters are reaping a windfall as a supply deficit due to a drought in Vietnam, the biggest coffee-producing country after Brazil and the largest supplier of Robusta beans, results in a boom in prices

- Ajay Sukumaran

For those who start and end their day with a cup of coffee, the Americano, cappuccino or latte at Starbucks and Blue Tokai, or any of the other coffee aficionado’s haunts in India like Third Wave and Tim Hortons, tasted just the same last year. But coffee planters in the country were served a bitter brew, as a dip in prices in the international market and factors like erratic weather and lower domestic yields made it difficult for them to even recover investments. One of those left grappling with such consequences was Satish A.T., a coffee planter from Sakleshpur, nestled in the Western Ghats in Karnataka, a state that accounts for over 70 per cent of India’s coffee production. Pushed to defaulting on a bank loan running into several lakhs, Satish lost a piece of land he had pledged as collateral, when the lender moved the debt recovery tribunal. Shift to 2024, and Satish finds himself in vastly different circumstances. Buoyed by a record high in coffee prices, he has even bought a new car on a full down payment of Rs 17 lakh. Talking about the land he lost, Satish said, “If it were this year, I could have retained the land.”