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Devouring profit - International Coffee Organization

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Hence a contracted temporary worker could expect an annual income of around US$250<br />

if he works all the year. In comparison to many countries labour is therefore very<br />

Table 33. Labour wages in different states of India, 2000 prices.<br />

State Rs/day US$/day<br />

Karnataka 56.25 1.25<br />

Kerala 71.74 1.59<br />

Tamil Nadu 46.50 1.03<br />

Andhra Pradesh 61.70 1.37<br />

cheap in India, and explains why labour is a smaller proportion of the total production<br />

cost structure than other countries. IPM strategies often demand greater amounts of<br />

labour than other methods (e.g. a calendar spray regime for instance) hence the low<br />

cost of the labour in this country could facilitate the adoption of IPM strategy for<br />

managing CBB.<br />

Farmers’ income: income from coffee is very seasonal in India, with just one peak of<br />

income per year, which can be worrying for the farmer. In order to minimise the effect<br />

of seasonal variations, farmers may be expected to try to spread flows of labour and<br />

harvest production throughout the year. Upton (1996) points out that there are various<br />

strategies, such as diversification of agricultural production, to establish different onand<br />

off-farm activities, storing food, seeds and animal fodder, etc. Seasonal income<br />

will have different effects depending on the period of the year when income is scarce<br />

because some activities have to be delayed to attend to a more important activity. The<br />

farmer has to manage different labour requirements and availability to optimise his<br />

gross income. In the case of CBB management, practices that can easily be accommodated<br />

by the farmer will be more easily accepted by him.<br />

In order to diversify their income, Indian coffee farmers have developed production<br />

systems to involve more than one crop in order to get income from different sources<br />

and in different periods of the year. In a project survey carried out on coffee farmers of<br />

Karnataka it was found that 95.6% of them had pepper as an inter-crop. In many cases<br />

the inter-crop allows generation of an important part of the total farm income. For<br />

instance in an interview carried out during the visit to Wayanad region we met Mr.<br />

Vijayakumar who has a small farm of about 1 ha. He told us that his income was<br />

depending on three sources,- coffee, pepper and areca nut. The individual participation<br />

of each of them to his income was coffee, 50%; areca, 29%; pepper, 21%.<br />

Thus other crops are important to the income composition of a normal coffee farm. It<br />

is quite possible that sometimes this alternative income becomes a relevant source to<br />

cover costs related to CBB management, whilst at others it could become a source of<br />

competition for the farmer’s resources.<br />

23 Exchange Rate US$1= Rs 45<br />

23<br />

87

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