Faced with increasing labour and input costs, India needs to boost production to remain viable in the coffee sector, key government officials said today.

“... Increasing labour and input costs... recurring weather aberrations are affecting the viability of coffee estates,” the Ministry of Commerce and Industry Additional Secretary, Ms Vijaylaxmi Joshi, said at a coffee conference here.

“Our production has not grown as we would like it to be,” she told the United Planters’ Association of Southern India-Karnataka Planters’ Association annual event.

The Chairman of the state-run Coffee Board, Mr Jawaid Akhtar, said India’s coffee production has remained more or less stagnant after breaching the three-lakh-tonne mark in 2000-01. Subsequently, it suffered “great setbacks” till it regained the three-lakh tonne mark in 2010.

“If we are to maintain the share of exports and sustain the domestic market requirements, we need to take steps to increase the production at about 5 per cent, which is quite a big challenge,” he said.

“At the present productivity level of 838 kg/hectare, coffee cultivation is becoming unviable due to a sharp increase in labour and input costs,” Mr Akhtar said.

“The technology released by the Research Department of the Board has the potential to achieve a productivity level of about 1,200 kg/ha in the case of Arabica and the 2,000 kg/ha in case of Robusta if properly adopted,” he said.

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