The next time you stop by at the neighbourhood coffee shop, try reading the dregs of your favourite brew. It could spill the beans on a story that’s been a long time brewing.If you’ve ever wondered how small growers manage to stay afloat in a market in which coffee prices have hit a 30-year low — the lowest in 100 years in real terms — here’s the answer: The middle-man. Banish the traditional image of the unethical grabber, this middle-man is a good guy!Enter the Amalgamated Bean Coffee (ABC) Trading Company, and their 42 designated middle-men, who liaise with coffee-growers, big and small, across prime plantations in Coorg, Chikmagalur and Hasan in Karnataka. They calculate the price on the basis of closing figures in coffee exchanges in New York and London, and convert it to rupees, minus expenses and margins, and quote it to the planter. If there are any doubts, the planter is welcome to store his produce in the company godown and return on a better day.‘‘Post-liberalisation and restructuring of the powers of the Coffee Board, we were one of the survivors who took up the responsibility of procuring coffee from small growers, who were suddenly left to fend for themselves,’’ says Sudipta Mukherjee, head, marketing, of the Cafe Coffee Day division of the Bangalore-based ABC.Since 1993, the catchment area has expanded from 100 to include 11,000 coffee growers owning anywhere between half-an-acre to 1,000 acres of plantations in Karnataka. The state, incidentally, is the only one in India where all three categories of growers co-exist: small growers with two to 50 acres, medium growers with 50 to 400 acres, and large growers with 400-plus acres.The ABC policy is a beginning, acknowledge coffee-growers. ‘‘Earlier, it would be three-four years before we were paid in full for what we sold. Now I sell anytime to anyone and receive the amount in one go,’’ says H A Vinay, who comes from a family with 80 years in coffee planting. ‘‘We’re still barely managing to break even, but at least we have a choice now.’’Points out coffee grower Abhijit Gowda, ‘‘Small growers cannot break even. Those who succeed are the ones who study the ABC rates and decide when to sell. The planter community is still waiting for stable, reliable coffee prices.’’Officially, planters reap an average of Rs 50,000 from each acre per month but planters say profit today is barely Rs 2,000/acre, a far cry from the early ’90s, when Brazil’s crop failed and planters here took home almost Rs 60,000 profit per acre.There are stray reports of suicides by indebted coffee growers in Karnataka, but Asia’s second largest grower ABC says it is harvesting trust. ‘‘The coffee trade is like futures trade, making coffee the second most traded commodity after petroleum,’’ explains Mukherjee. ‘‘We give the small grower the choice to sell or not to sell, building confidence in the coffee community. We also account for distortions like mass holding of produce by growers in expectation of price rise.’’According to a senior ABC official, their pricing works because the company is the only ‘ready buyer’ through the year. ‘‘We buy even if the export market is not attractive. Planters wait for us to announce prices,’’ he points out. About 80 per cent of the coffee they source is exported to the US and Europe, while 20 per cent goes into filter coffee retail and their coffee bar chain Cafe Coffee Day.
