Devouring profit - International Coffee Organization

Indian coffee growers
Farmers and size of holding: in India there are about 140,000 coffee farmers while
the total area planted in this crop is about 350,000 ha; so the national average is 2.5 ha
of coffee per farmer. This figure is similar to that found in other countries such as
Colombia, Honduras or Mexico. Table 30 below describes the distribution pattern of
holdings in different states of India (Coffee Board, 2000).
Table 30. Distribution of holdings in India, by state.
Size (ha) Karnataka Kerala Tamil Nadu Others Total
I. Small Holdings
Number of holdings in each category
0-2 27,109 71,245 11,396 10,502 120,252
2-4 6,580 2,995 1,246 6 10,827
4-10 4,160 1,676 728 - 6,564
Total
II. Large Holdings
37,849 75,916 13,370 10,508 137,643
10-20 1,020 342 156 3 1,521
20-40 445 63 49 4 561
40-60 150 27 36 - 213
60-80 87 19 15 - 121
800-100 46 7 9 2 64
Above 100 107 19 29 15 170
Total 1,855 477 294 24 2,650
Total India
39,704 76,393 13,664 10,532 140,293
From Table 30, 98% of farmers have less than 10 hectares and the 86% have 2 ha or
less. It is important to understand size distribution since adoption of technologies can
be affected by the farm size. Duque et al. (2000) found in Colombia that the adoption
of IPM in CBB management was higher in the medium and large farmers rather than
the smaller (less than 5 ha in coffee). If this is true for other coffee countries, the
strategy for transferring IPM should be designed to promote good adoption levels
despite socio-economic barriers. If we take the cumulative percentage of farmers and
coffee areas we can quantify this as the Gini coefficient 21 (Tascon, 1980). This indicator
gives a measure of land concentration, which in the case of Indian coffee has a
value of 0.48, which compares to 0.57 for Colombian coffee and 0.43 for Mexico, i.e.
land concentration is lower than Colombia but higher than Mexico. Land concentration
can be seen from different points of view e.g. land reforms etc., but also for IPM
management. Resources to dedicate to technology transfer are always limited and it is
important for planning purposes to understand both the distribution of land and the
relative contribution to total coffee production. Smallholders in India account for 60%
of the area under coffee (Table 31), which is very significant. Hence even if large
producers are more productive, coffee smallholders in India constitute an important
sector, not only for social reasons but from economic and environmental standpoints
as well.
21 If Gini coefficient equals 1, there is total land concentration (one person owns all
the land); if it equals 0, everyone has an equal area.
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