Attempting to bridge the growing gaps between producers and consumers of coffee, Grounds For Change addresses matters of traceability, fairness, and taste. Yashvi Shah offers a glimpse into the daily realities of coffee growers M Kethegowda and M Sannarangegowda, who were central to the project’s vision.
If you could speak to a smallholder coffee grower in India, what would you ask them about their life?
As the seventh largest producer of coffee globally, India has over 3,00,000 growers, of whom the majority—around 83 per cent—are smallholder producers. These small-scale producers, who typically own or manage limited land holdings as modest as five acres, contribute significantly to the diversity and sustainability of the Indian coffee sector. In India, coffee is largely produced in densely forested regions like Biligirirangana (BR) Hills, Kodagu and Chikkamagaluru.
In 2022, Jontu Centre for People and Nature Futures, a conservation NGO and interdisciplinary consultancy Quicksand—with the support of Bengaluru Sustainability Forum—facilitated Grounds for Change, a project which initiated conversations between coffee growers and consumers through in-person workshops and an online survey. It aimed to imagine a hopeful, shared future, where both growers and consumers feel equally invested in creating high quality coffee, and connections between them more tangible.
Around 150 respondents, mostly between the ages of 18–45 years, participated in the online survey. Most respondents lived in cities, it was revealed, but felt connected to ‘village life’ even though they had little prior experience. They expressed concerns about the exploitation of coffee growers, deforestation, biodiversity loss, and climate change—and a desire for dialogues with coffee growers to better understand what it meant to grow coffee: Do they get a reasonable income to support themselves and their family? What does a typical day in their village look like? What is their relationship with those who consume their coffee?
Coffee production is increasingly being impacted by the looming climate crisis, be it yields or the flavour of the brew. Arshiya Bose, the founder of Black Baza, a specialty coffee social enterprise, tells me that rising temperatures and humidity make coffee plants more susceptible to fungal outbreaks. “Unseasonal rainfall at the time of picking may result in coffee with a high moisture content, leaving behind an almost grassy flavour in your cup,” she explains.
Moreover, conventional supply chains are often long and opaque. “Consumers don’t really know much about where their coffee comes from. If they do, it’s about the flavour and roast of the coffee, but not so much about the growers,” Arshiya adds. This disconnect in the value chain leads to inequality where growers are in the dark about how much they can really charge for their coffee, and how it is received by the consumers. Projects like Grounds for Change then become critical in advocating for a more transparent and fair supply chain.
"Consumers don’t really know much about where their coffee comes from. If they do, it’s about the flavour and roast of the coffee, but not so much about the growers."
“Working on this project made me think about how we can align our coffee consumption habits with the values of forest-dwelling communities, and how we can foster a deeper understanding among consumers about the interdependence between coffee growers, forest ecosystems, and the well-being of wildlife,” says Babitha George, Partner at Quicksand. “As consumers, we need to engage more deeply, beyond labels and packaging, to make the effort to listen and learn from the many producers who are sensitively and patiently stewarding their own natural ecosystems alongside coffee production.”
To better understand the lives of smallholder coffee growers, I spoke to M Kethegowda and M Sannarangegowda, two coffee growers in Biligirirangana (BR) Hills, Karnataka, who also participated in Grounds for Change workshops. I was curious about their daily routine, their relationship with growing coffee, and coffee’s place in their culture.
My conversation with Kethegowda and Sannarangegowda took place over the phone, with me in Mumbai and them tuning in from BR Hills. Arshiya, who joined the call from Bengaluru, helped us translate their responses from Kannada to English.
The duo start their mornings early, around 7 am, always with a walk around their farms. To prepare for the day ahead, they eat a hearty breakfast, which usually involves ragi mudde with a vegetable curry made from brinjal, potatoes, or spinach. While Sannarangegowda prefers to drink tea, Kethegowda also drinks a piping hot cup of coffee. He starts by adding a little bit of coffee powder and jaggery to water. Kethegowda says that the key to a satisfying cup of coffee is to boil the water for about five to seven minutes: “It needs to be really hot.” He then strains it out and drinks his coffee black.
Everyday, just after sunrise, both tread their respective farms for about an hour and a half—tending to their coffee plants by pruning the bushes, removing unwanted weeds by hand, or tying different leaves underneath the coffee plants. They often visit other coffee growers in case they need help with activities like pruning, creating compost, mulching, and removing pests or fungal diseases.
Kethegowda and Sannarangegowda belong to the Soliga community—an indigenous forest-dwelling community whose origins date back to 800-2000 BC—and have been growing Arabica coffee in BR Hills for 40 years. They are also full-time members of Black Baza where their role involves green coffee sourcing, farmer capacity building, and participatory ecological monitoring.
Given the Soligas’ centuries-old connection to the forests of BR Hills, all farming practices are rooted in ancient forest-dwelling culture and knowledge. This also reflects in the many Soliga folktales and songs about life in the forest. When asked to share one such story, Kethegowda and Sannarangegowda lit up with excitement: “Should it be the one about the tree? Or should it be the one about the spider?” We shared a chuckle when they couldn’t settle on which one to narrate.
For the Soliga community, coffee is a relatively newer crop, and plays only a minor role in their cultural narratives. Sannarangegowda tells us that earlier—before the growers embraced coffee cultivation in the 1980s—they grew a diverse range of crops, including ragi and maize, and foraged fruits and vegetables like pigeon peas, wild spinach, and tubers from the forest. But with the wildlife—including barking deer, chital, elephants, sambar, and wild pigs—eating most of the ragi and maize, it made it difficult to sustain these crops. “Sometimes, I feel like we used to do so much,” says Sannarangegowda about the variety of produce they once grew. “But now we just look at our coffee plants.”
The transition to growing coffee, much like coffee itself, has been bittersweet. Kethegowda admits that while growing coffee is not intrinsically part of their culture, it has brought some prosperity. In the past, the Soliga community experienced severe scarcity of food and shelter. Kethegowda says, “The shift to growing coffee has somewhat coincided with improved overall access to education, electricity, healthcare, and public distribution goods.”
For Kethegowda and Sannarangegowda, participating in the workshops organised by Grounds for Change meant having an open conversation with their consumers about how they grow coffee.
Despite having mixed feelings about this transition, Kethegowda and Sannarangegowda have noticed people in BR Hills finally embracing coffee, and caring deeply about its quality and taste, especially given their initial scepticism. This wasn’t without some convincing—and a lot of hard work on Kethegowda and Sannarangegowda’s part—but they now feel very happy to see the community develop a sustained interest in growing good coffee.
But as conscious coffee growers, Kethegowda and Sannarangegowda still didn’t know what happens once the coffee leaves their farms, or who consumes it. For them, participating in the workshops organised by Grounds for Change meant having an open conversation with their consumers about how they grow coffee. Moreover, they were keen to understand how people who drank their coffee experienced it, in order to improve it based on feedback.
It was important for Kethegowda to convey to the consumers that his coffee is organic, and free of any chemical inputs. He recalls one such interaction where a consumer asked him, “What is the guarantee [that the coffee is grown without any chemical inputs or pesticides]?” The question caught him off-guard for a second, but he quickly understood why it was of significance. His response was simple, and indicative of the Soligas’ deep-rooted connection to the forest. Speaking of the various species of birds, insects, and other wildlife on his farm, he said: “There is so much life on my farm; it is proof that I don’t use any chemicals.”
Like all Soliga growers, Kethegowda and Sannarangegowda prioritise the preservation of their ancestral forest home, and the wildlife that inhabits it—whether it is the insects that contribute to soil health, plants that allow crops to thrive, or elephants and bears that usually stay away from the coffee plants. Maintaining a healthy ecological environment (and a hopeful spirit) in the face of the looming climate crisis is hard. It is apparent that the well-being of the forest ecosystem is intrinsically linked to the livelihoods and physical health of the communities that inhabit it, which raises the question: how do we sustain the growers and the forest?
“There is so much life on my farm; it is proof that I don’t use any chemicals.”
It is projects like Grounds for Change that enable us to assess the long-term social and environmental effects of our choices, thereby strengthening the connection between the grower and the consumer. As consumers, drinking organic coffee that is grown under the shade of native tree species and supporting smallholder producers like Kethegowda and Sannarangegowda—even if it is by paying marginally higher prices for coffee—are just small steps we can take in the right direction.
Yashvi Shah is the Partnerships Copywriter at The Locavore. In her free time, she likes creating playlists for her friends, and going on runs.
Read more about Grounds for Change, and its findings here. This is a paid partnership with Jontu Centre for Nature and People Futures. We strive to keep the practices of a producer transparent and honest across all forms of partnerships.
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