What is the coffee industry in India? What are the problems behind India's coffee industry?

Professional coffee knowledge exchange more coffee bean information please follow the coffee workshop (Wechat official account cafe_style)

Coffee has long been regarded as a legend in India.

Today, local coffee farmers are committed to better flavor and benefits.

CHIKMAGALUR, India-the coffee beans in Jacob Mammen's hand appear to have been processed.

The naked gray-green hemispheres have been eaten by monkeys, and the rest is what we often call coffee beans.

Mammen has been fighting the monkeys for years. He asked workers to patrol the plantation and tried to scare them away with something called a "monkey gun".

"it doesn't help," he said. "the monkeys are smart. They know it's just a trick."

According to legend, Baba Budan, a 17th-century Muslim pilgrim, smuggled coffee from Yemen to India, bringing the crop to India. Since then, there have been coffee plantations all over India.

Jacob sold the processed raw beans to roasters in Taiwan and Germany at twice the cost.

Twenty years ago, however, this kind of marketing was impossible, when the Indian government sold coffee for itself and exported large quantities of shoddy coffee to the former Soviet Union.

The way Mammen and other coffee farmers operate in India is in many ways a symbol of India's development as a global economic power.

Since the Indian government changed its policy to allow farmers to control their sales in the mid-1990s, India's coffee industry has improved in terms of quality and profits, and has a place in the coffee circle.

Even Starbucks noticed this and began to buy in small quantities years later. The chain is used exclusively in espresso drinks at its recently opened stores in India. In the end, the ancestors of special coffee expect to use Indian coffee in other countries.

It operates new stores for the Mumbai-based Tata Group, one of the world's largest coffee producers.

The situation of coffee in India has attracted attention in many ways, and farmers may get more opportunities in countries where it is easier to market.

In India, they are part of an ancient way of life.

Except for the "pests"-monkeys, cobras and elephants-Indian coffee grows not only in the shade of trees, but also in forests, similar to the slopes of the Cascade Mountains in Washington.

Its workers live in free multi-family rooms with government-mandated free childcare subsidies and pensions. Some people use electric spice grinders for cooking and are equipped with satellite TV.

"Coffee that is friendly and ethical, I think we've talked about before, but we've never sold coffee like this," Mammen said. "even now, our marketing is poor."

It is also true that Indian coffee is less well-known than coffee from Latin America, Indonesia and Africa. It is rarely used by professional bakers in the United States, partly because it is so far away, and partly because it is rarely known.

It is true that Indian coffee started relatively late.

In the 1940s, India began to buy coffee, paying farmers mainly on the basis of quantity rather than quality. This continued into the 1990s, and India missed the wave of boutique coffee that began in the 1970s. When roasters from Seattle and elsewhere travel around the world in search of the best coffee beans.

Mammen still remembers the first time he attended SCAA's annual meeting, in 1996, when he was scared.

He has to deal with things like "you can grow tea, but are you sure you can also grow coffee?" Or something like that.

Of course he grows coffee. His great-grandfather bought the coffee plantation from the British colonists.

But the question is, "how does your coffee taste?"

"it tastes like coffee," thought Mammen, who often drinks instant coffee at home.

"Indian coffee tastes like pot water."

Although they have not entered the US market to this day, Mammen and others have spent a lot of money and energy improving the quality of Indian coffee to sell it to high-end roasters in Asia and Europe, including Italy's Illy.

Move on to a better flavor

For many coffee farmers, Sunalini Menon contributes to the increase in the taste and profit of their coffee. The former quality director of the Indian Coffee Bureau chose to retire early in the 1990s because of the Indian government's streamlined policy. Although the Coffee Bureau of India did not care about the quality of coffee, Menon created a project at the time for coffee farmers who wanted higher quality coffee and were willing to pay more. Now his nine-member group monitors the quality and industry chain of coffee at Bangalore, and provides advice and help to farmers on how to improve the flavor of coffee. In India, 2/3 of growers are Robusta, the long-maligned countrymen of Arabica.