Devouring profit - International Coffee Organization

Hence a contracted temporary worker could expect an annual income of around US$250
if he works all the year. In comparison to many countries labour is therefore very
Table 33. Labour wages in different states of India, 2000 prices.
State Rs/day US$/day
Karnataka 56.25 1.25
Kerala 71.74 1.59
Tamil Nadu 46.50 1.03
Andhra Pradesh 61.70 1.37
cheap in India, and explains why labour is a smaller proportion of the total production
cost structure than other countries. IPM strategies often demand greater amounts of
labour than other methods (e.g. a calendar spray regime for instance) hence the low
cost of the labour in this country could facilitate the adoption of IPM strategy for
managing CBB.
Farmers’ income: income from coffee is very seasonal in India, with just one peak of
income per year, which can be worrying for the farmer. In order to minimise the effect
of seasonal variations, farmers may be expected to try to spread flows of labour and
harvest production throughout the year. Upton (1996) points out that there are various
strategies, such as diversification of agricultural production, to establish different onand
off-farm activities, storing food, seeds and animal fodder, etc. Seasonal income
will have different effects depending on the period of the year when income is scarce
because some activities have to be delayed to attend to a more important activity. The
farmer has to manage different labour requirements and availability to optimise his
gross income. In the case of CBB management, practices that can easily be accommodated
by the farmer will be more easily accepted by him.
In order to diversify their income, Indian coffee farmers have developed production
systems to involve more than one crop in order to get income from different sources
and in different periods of the year. In a project survey carried out on coffee farmers of
Karnataka it was found that 95.6% of them had pepper as an inter-crop. In many cases
the inter-crop allows generation of an important part of the total farm income. For
instance in an interview carried out during the visit to Wayanad region we met Mr.
Vijayakumar who has a small farm of about 1 ha. He told us that his income was
depending on three sources,- coffee, pepper and areca nut. The individual participation
of each of them to his income was coffee, 50%; areca, 29%; pepper, 21%.
Thus other crops are important to the income composition of a normal coffee farm. It
is quite possible that sometimes this alternative income becomes a relevant source to
cover costs related to CBB management, whilst at others it could become a source of
competition for the farmer’s resources.
23 Exchange Rate US$1= Rs 45
23
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