Chikmagalur: Coffee & Crisis

The Land of Coffee

Gather round, this one is going to be a long and interesting one.

As most of our readers know, we are a climate tech startup, based out of the Silicon Valley of India, Bengaluru. Most of our core members’ roots are from South India. Our communities were exposed to European and Middle Eastern traders very early on. Why am I bringing up colonialism? Well, with it came along some good things as well. Our communities managed to absorb their culture and traditions into our lives. To this day a kid growing up here can find traces of history these traders left behind. Like coffee.

How many of you knew that the very first coffee plant grown in India was in a small hill station in the south of Karnataka, Chikmagalur? An Indian Sufi, by the name of Baba Budan aka Hazarat Shah Janab Allah Magatabi, on his way back from Hajj brought along with him some coffee beans from Arabia and planted them on a hill now called Baba-Budan Giri after him. His kind act from 1670 gave way to coffee plantations being established all across the town, extending all the way to the southern tip of Karnataka, Kodagu aka Coorg. And no, the snowball didn’t stop rolling just there; coffee is now grown in three regions of India with Karnataka leading the way, followed by Kerala and Tamil Nadu.

The coffee revolution in Chikmagalur helped small farmers cultivate a crop that was high in demand and had a good profit margin. With almost 96% of the farmers in Chikmagalur having less than 4 hectares, most coffee plantations out there are run by smallholders. Most of them rely mainly on their coffee harvest and may have some spices growing around their land. Being the major district growing export-quality coffee beans, it helps make Karnataka produce 70% of the coffee grown in the entire country. However, recently the crop has failed to increase the revenue for the state or for growers or sellers. The reason simply being Climate Change.

Our Mission in Chikmagalur

Our core team has lived around the realities smallholding farmers face during the multiple climate change-induced adversities they face. Our mission has always remained the same, help fight climate change and social inequality. What better way than to find solutions to help these farmers, right? Well, that’s what even we thought.

Early July this year, Chikmagalur faced heavy rainfall that led to flooding and landslides. Along with heavy damage to properties, lands & cattle, the landslides cut off a village’s connectivity with the rest. The biggest loss? The crops. When a farmer puts his all into a single crop/harvest and has to see them get destroyed by forces of nature that are beyond his control, the world around them collapses. Urban communities across Karnataka might hardly be affected by their loss, but our core team was not willing to sit idle to be just another spectator.

Our plan was simple — convince the small farmers to allow us to help them safeguard their property from natural calamities endemic to the area like landslides and floods as well as make their lands water-positive. As of today, I can proudly say that not only have we managed to band them up together but have successfully raised an impact grant to run our pilot programme in Chikmagalur.

The Problem

The main problem in this location according to the experts is excessive rainfall that leads to floods and landslides. The solution to this is just one — harnessing the power of water.

When there is so much potential to make use of, defending is usually the best way to attack.

How exactly can we do this? This is where we come into the picture.

The Solution

Rainwater Harvesting

Our team of experts along with core members have deduced an elaborate plan to help the plantation owner in question with this dilemma. One of the very first modifications our team plans to implement on-ground is rainwater harvesting. Diverting all the excess water flowing into the coffee plantation can be collected and directed toward a pit/tank/valley using trenches. These channels are a more sustainable option than using PVC pipes and can hold off the momentum of the running water. This would more importantly help the plantation owner to be flood-proof.

Setting this up can have monumental effects on local aquifers as well. If directed well, it could rejuvenate and restore dried-out lakes and more significantly ensure water availability in water-scarce areas around town.

A major use case for this being successful is how Tata coffee managed to rejuvenate multiple lakes, 5 ponds and 1 bore in the hill station of Kodagu. Read about it here.

Humus

We have extensively researched and found that the use of humus on coffee plantations can be a game changer. For those of you who may be unfamiliar with this word, Humus is the dark organic component found in soil, which is formed due to the decomposition of plant and animal matter. The coffee plant loves water but at the same time cannot contain much because in most locations across the country they are grown on hills or slopes. In order to help them retain moisture and grow well, it is common practice to layer the soil will humus. The moist texture of the humus allows the coffee plant to hold the extra hydration needed for its survival. Experts believe there could be a direct correlation between the origin of rivers and coffee forests. A well-maintained coffee forest (consider spanning across thousands of hectares) with six inches of humus could result in infiltration of a significant amount of water which would ultimately give birth to rivers! For instance, the birth of the river Hemavathi is in the heartland of coffee, located at Mudigere taluk. Also, the birth of the world-famous Kaveri river is on the coffee slopes of Kodagu.

In conclusion, there are many viable solutions to help them out there, all we need is the collective power to go with it.

Local Support is Crucial

As of now, we will be running our programme on a single plantation. Using our pilot, we hope we inspire the locals to join our cause and help us help them. In entirety, this pilot would help us onboard the first believers on our citizen platform, with which each farmer/common folk can contribute to efforts to uplift their communities from all kinds of adversities; starting with climate change.

Why do we need the local farmers to rally up?

Because of the small orifices in the soil system, the majority of coffee zones are moist zones. These invisible pores function as capillary tubes, bringing up groundwater to the plant roots and maintaining soil moisture. This network is so closely intertwined that a minor disturbance in one sector can cause severe water depletion in another plantation miles away. As a result, it is critical to understand that any kind of water conservation solution is not a one-man show, but rather a collaborative effort.

Conclusion

Our entire product runs with a sole mission — to build climate resilience and provide equal opportunities for every single human being. Whether it is the farmers struggling to find ways to protect their lands or it is the normal folk trying to just stay safe in these unpredictable weather, we aim to help our communities realize the power they have in them to take the necessary actions.

With the pilot, we aim to showcase that if we have the right resources and some local support, we can move mountains. Our single effort through this project will be not only to give solutions and scoot from there but rather to dig deep and attempt to make Chikmagalur one of the earliest adopters of renewable sources of energy. In the long run, we wish to make Chikmagalur a completely green hill station, one which will no longer rely on unsustainable agricultural or living practices but also be able to onboard technology and IoT devices. (Here’s a good read on the benefits of Smart Farming)

Our core team has always believed in the collective power of human beings and we truly trust in the process our leaders our guiding us through. The tunnel might be dark right now; with more people waking up and realizing the next few years will not be a joy ride, helps shed some light at the end of it.

It’s time for everyone, to not only start taking steps toward leading a sustainable life but also to understand that we cannot fight the forces of nature, we can only embrace it. Rather than taking action to try and halt things, let’s prepare to welcome it with well-planned infrastructure and systems that will help us harness the energy rather than waste it and see it destroying our livelihoods.

If you feel like contributing to our pilot programme in rural India or our cause in general, feel free to check out our Gitcoin grant page here.

Written by Kiran S Nambiar