WORLD COFFEE CONFERENCE (Syllabus: GS Paper 3 - Agriculture)

Context: : India will be hosting the World Coffee Conference for the first time, with its fifth edition promoted by the International Coffee Organization set to be held in Bengaluru on 25-28 September. 

• ICO is the primary intergovernmental organization dedicated to promoting coffee trade among coffee-producing nations.

Key Points

• WCC (2023) is being organised for the first time in Asia.
• Every four to five years, the International Coffee Organization holds a high-level World Coffee Conference to enable discussion around critical topics for the global coffee sector. 
• The first four Conferences took place in the United Kingdom (2001), Brazil (2005), Guatemala (2010), and Ethiopia (2016).
• The world coffee community will gather in Bangalore for four days of engaging debate at the 5th World Coffee Conference, hosted by the Government of India and in connection with the G20 under the country’s presidency.
• The 75 Member states of the International Coffee Organization (ICO) and top-level experts, including coffee growers and representatives from government, the private sector, development partners, as well as civil society and academia, will debate on coffee market trends, technology and best practices for building a circular coffee economy, regenerative agriculture, sustainability through consumption and access to finance.

Coffee Cultivation

• Second most important beverage of India after tea.
• Indigenous to Abyssinia Plateau (Ethiopia).
• It was brought to India by Baba Budan in the 17th century from Arabia and was raised in the Baba Budan Hills of Karnataka.
• British planters established large coffee estates near:
• Chikmagalur (Karnataka) in 1826.
• Manantody (Wayanad) and Shevoroys in 1830.
• Nilgiris in 1839.

• Coffee cultivation requires plenty of cheap and skilled labour for various operations including sowing, transplanting, pruning, plucking, drying, grading and packing of coffee.
• At present, more than 52,000 coffee gardens giving employment to 2.5 million persons exist in India.
• ‘Coffee Board of India’ was established through a constitutional act ‘Coffee Act VII of 1942’ under the administrative control of the Ministry of Commerce and Industry.
• The Centre extended the RoDTEP (Refund of Duties and Taxes on Exported Products) scheme to the coffee sector to boost exports. 
• Coffee Arabica (49% of the area) and Coffee Robusta (51% of the area) are the two main varieties of coffee grown in India.
• Karnataka is the largest producer (about 70% of total coffee production and 60% of the area under coffee in India).
• Brazil is  the largest coffee producer in the world .