Coffee Under the Canopy: India

In January, Priscilla and I, Hriday, travelled to the coffee regions of Karnataka and Kerala. For DRWakefield, it was our first visit to India since the pandemic, and for me personally, a return to origin in a much more literal sense.

Visiting coffee farms leaves you with a set of impressions that shape how you understand coffee. This trip was different and challenged my understanding of coffee production. Being Indian myself, there were many assumptions I carried with me that turned out to be outdated. From what I learned, I couldn’t be more excited for the future of Indian coffee.

Forest first, coffee second

If you arrive at a typical Indian coffee farm and look straight ahead, you would be forgiven for thinking you are standing in a forest. Coffee is grown almost entirely under two and three tier shade systems. Tall native trees form the upper canopy, their trunks wrapped in pepper vines, fruit and other trees at eye level, and coffee in the understory.

Mechanisation is simply not possible in this environment because of the slopes, tree density, ecological and legal protections. Therefore, picking is entirely manual and the need for shade management is constant. Several producers said this is simply how they choose to grow coffee here, and they don’t particularly view this as some sort of ‘sustainable model’.

This brings clear advantages: biodiversity is high, soil moisture is retained influencing nutrient uptake, longer maturations for a more complex cup, and temperature extremes are softened by the canopy. But this introduces a different set of constraints. Yields are lower than sun-grown systems, labour demand is constant for picking and shade management, and disease pressures are very real in wet years.

Labour is not limited to picking and pruning. Shade has to be actively managed. Many estates support hundreds, sometimes thousands, of shade trees that cannot simply be left to grow unchecked. Too much canopy can reduce airflow and light, increasing disease pressure and reducing productivity. Trees need to be climbed, thinned and trimmed before and during the monsoon. Areca nut palms, often reaching heights of 50-80 feet, are commonly intercropped and require their own cycle of harvesting and maintenance. These tasks demand skilled and confident workers, given the height at which they must operate. Several producers say shade management is one of the most underestimated costs of coffee production in India.

Harley and Raxidi Estates are long-term partners for us and form a core part of our specialty Robusta offering. We have worked with them consistently over the years, and they remain a reference point for what carefully grown and processed Robusta can look like from here. The estates are owned and run by D.M. Purnesh, a fourth-generation producer who has been actively shaping the direction of the farms in recent years, particularly around agronomy, processing, and quality control.

Both estates sit within dense, shaded systems where coffee is only one layer of a much larger landscape, and that density makes wildlife presence unavoidable. At the estate, hornbills came up repeatedly in conversation. The Malabar Grey Hornbill is endemic to the Western Ghats and is classified as a vulnerable species. They are a core part of the estate’s identity and branding. They are regular visitors, and their presence is treated as a marker of ecological health. Later that evening at Raxidi, while cupping coffees, a pair of hornbills flew across the canopy in front of us. It felt like confirmation of everything we had been discussing that day.

At Devarkhan Estate, we were told about a tiger that had recently moved through the farm with two cubs, the second visit of the month. The estate sits close to the Bhadra National Reserve, home to over 50 tigers and coffee plantations become cooler corridors for movement. There was pride in the fact, but also caution; they found themselves adjusting their routines and were sometimes forced to use firecrackers to avoid direct interaction.

Driving between Chikmagalur and Wayanad, we crossed the Nagarhole reserve, which sits between two of India’s important coffee-growing regions. On our very first farm visit in Wayanad, we encountered the Malabar Giant Squirrel moving through the canopy. If you have never seen one before, it is hard to describe how striking it is; it felt like an immediate reminder of where we were, coffee forests.

A brief history, and why it still matters

To understand the present, it helps to look at how the sector has been organised and regulated over time. For a broader overview of how coffee arrived in India, we’ve covered that history separately linked here.

The Coffee Board of India, established in 1942 and operating under the Coffee Act of 1942, controlled marketing, pricing, and export. Until the early 90s, producers were required to sell their coffee to the Board, which pooled, graded, and sold it on their behalf. Individual estates had no direct exposure to export markets, limited incentive to differentiate quality, and almost no role in post-harvest decision-making beyond basic processing.

This changed significantly after liberalisation in 1993, when private sales were permitted and the pooling system was dismantled. Since then, the role of the Coffee Board of India (CBI) has gradually shifted from regulator to facilitator. The Board now focuses on research, training, quality standards, and sector-wide development.

India also retains a strict legal framework for plantation agriculture through the Plantation Labour Act of 1951. The Act applies to estates either above 5ha or a workforce of over 15 workers and sets out clear obligations around wages, housing, medical facilities, sanitation, maternity benefits, schooling, and childcare for workers and their families. Compliance extends beyond the field itself, requiring estates to maintain on-site infrastructure and long-term employment relationships rather than seasonal or casual labour alone. These requirements raise the cost of production, but they also shape the structure and culture of estate coffee in India, embedding worker welfare, housing, and accountability into how farms are run.

Today, the Coffee Board of India occupies an unusual but influential position within the sector. It defines national grading standards, oversees quality frameworks, conducts research, and operates the most comprehensive coffee laboratory in the country. They also play a central role in training. Across our visits, many of the agronomists, sustainability managers, processing leads, and quality professionals we met had at some point had been trained by the Coffee Board. Their influence was everywhere.

During our visit we met with Dr Dayan Mandappa, Senior Quality and Research Lead, and Kurma Rao, Secretary and CEO. Their ISO-accredited QC laboratory assesses up to 69 parameters and receives approx. 4,000 samples annually from across the chain. They offer services from sensory evaluation and grading to pesticide residue testing and support for new processing styles. CBI currently works with a hybrid quality framework that blends elements of SCA and CVA. All 9 members of the QC team are Q and Evolved Q certified, even as CVA adoption across the wider Indian industry remains limited. For now, we must speak two languages.

They have also invested heavily in analytical tools. An electronic nose system based on gas chromatography breaks down aroma profiles into thousands of chemical compounds, feeding into a continuously expanding database. An electronic tongue provides statistical analysis of taste attributes and is primarily used to compare blends for consistency. Despite a £300k investment, Dr Mandappa says “Machines can identify compounds, but only humans can interpret how those compounds translate into flavour.”

All that said, the CBI’s most vital influence has been in the field. They play a central role in varietal research and rollout, with Chandragiri (Selection 13) standing out as one of the most widely adopted successes in recent years. Developed for higher productivity and resistance to leaf rust and white stem borer, we saw several estates actively renovating blocks to replace with Chandragiri. More recently, the CBI has released a new generation of varietals focused on resilience and yield stability under increasing climate pressure. The most exciting one that’s 18 years in the making is called Raksha, a cultivar whose name translates to “protection” and is related to Catimor & Chandragiri.

Working with Allanasons

Our time with Allanasons formed the backbone of the trip. We have been buying coffee from Allanasons for over twenty years, and they remain one of our longest-standing and most significant partners in India. Allanasons is the trading and export arm within the wider Allana Group, a family-owned business that operates across agriculture and food commodities. You may also see references to Allana Consumer Products or Allana Coffee in different contexts, but for clarity, Allanasons is the name we use to describe the coffee export and milling operation we work with.

Allanasons operates at a scale matched by very few in the country and is widely regarded as the second-largest coffee exporter in India. They run five locations nationally. During this trip, we visited their dry mill in Hassan and several of the contributing estates they work with across Chikmagalur and Coorg. The Hassan mill is one of the largest and most established commercial dry mills in the country. Operations are designed for consistency and traceability at scale. Approximately 30–40 permanent staff manage intake, processing, quality control, logistics, and documentation, supported by an additional 40–60 seasonal workers during peak harvest months. The size of the operation allows Allanasons to handle large programmes reliably while maintaining clear segregation between lots, grades, and customer specifications.

Across the Allanasons-linked farms we visited, Manjunath, Allanason’s Agronomist and Sustainability Manager, repeatedly came back to the same point: nutrition. He visits over 200 farms a year, and in his view, farms were simply not feeding their trees enough. Some producers were using 5-10 times less vol than Manjunath recommended, but parallelly, costs have risen sharply, and producer behaviour has shifted with the high coffee prices. At these prices, the need to invest reduces, and in this case, that would apply to fertilisers. Manjunath’s concern was not about this year’s crop, because under-feeding does not always show immediate consequences. The impact appears later in plant stress, lower resilience, and vulnerability to disease when the weather acts up. This came up repeatedly in conversations, especially around leaf rust and uneven flowering after erratic rains.

Devarkhan Estate, an estate that work with Allansons, provide a clear example of how these pressures can manifest. Located in Bababudangiri near Mullayanagiri, where ‘giri’ itself translates to hills, is regarded as the highest coffee farm in the country, sitting between 1,500 – 1,600masl across just under 50 acres. The farm is owned by Mr Praveen, and he shared that historically they planted S795 and Cauvery which they now find to be problematic. More than the fact that they’re susceptible to leaf rust, the trees have become physically difficult to harvest as they age. Many plants are now 45–50 years old, tall and labour-intensive to pick on these slopes. In response to this, Praveen has been gradually shifting towards Chandragiri and Catimor, which have shown better field performance and are easier to manage, despite varietal authenticity concerns. Current replanting is focused on dwarf varieties, allowing higher plant density per hectare and reducing reliance on increasingly scarce skilled labour.

From Allanasons’ perspective, this is where their role becomes most visible. They are able to watch patterns emerge across regions and farms, and feeding that information back through people like Manjunath allows farmers to continue getting the support they need.

Processing as a response

The most visible of changes was in processing and is not limited to Arabica. At both Raxidi and Badra, we tasted Robustas, and despite being fresh from the harvest, they showcased the potential that’s always been there.

Within Arabica though, Kalledevarapura sits at the centre of this shift. Led by Shravan and his father, D.M. Shankar, the estate has evolved into a processing hub extending beyond their own production. Coffee from multiple contributing farms, including Devarkhan Estate, is processed here, allowing for a broader range of fermentation trials. From the 2024 harvest alone, the operation worked with more than 130 SKUs, many of them developed in collaboration with buyers. The focus is on the domestic market. Shravan is driven by a clear intention to demonstrate what Indian-grown and processed coffees can look like when processing is treated seriously.

That approach is closely tied to Shravan’s background. He holds a Master’s degree in coffee science and economics and has spent time learning and working alongside producers and roasters from other origins through courses and industry exchanges, including the likes of Monseratt from Coopedota in Costa Rica. Those relationships continue to inform how he thinks about cultivation, fermentation, and flavour development.

Early on, they learned how sensitive fermentation outcomes were to small environmental factors. The physical location of a barrel, ambient temperature, and airflow all had measurable effects on flavour. As a result, fermentation is carried out both indoors and outdoors, each with different conditions. Cherry-first fermentations are common, with fruit mostly preferred over imported yeasts after repeated trials showed local microbial cultures to be more expressive. Standard fermentations typically run for around 13 days, while extended experiments, particularly with Liberica, have reached up to 720 hours. High water temperatures present further challenges, often requiring fermentations to be staged or alternated between spaces to avoid thermal stress. The system is largely gravity-driven, with minimal mechanical intervention, supported by close pH tracking, moisture control, and slow drying

Raxidi, by contrast, is overwhelmingly Canephora, with some of the oldest trees on the estate now over 80 years old. Processing decisions here begin well before harvest. Naturals and experimental lots are typically harvested at 25 brix and above, while washed Canephora is taken at 20 brix. Arabica thresholds are slightly lower. This selectivity only allows pickers to collect 15–20 kg per day, compared to over 100 kg under strip-picking systems. The objective is not to push Robusta towards Arabica, but to present Canephora with cleanliness, sweetness, and structure, without the woody or phenolic defects that still dominate much of the category.

Processing and quality control sits with Satya, who manages both post-harvest operations and the quality lab. She holds a postgraduate diploma in Coffee Quality Management from the Coffee Board of India and comes from an agricultural background. Post harvest, the raking team manage around 15 separate lots at any given time, spanning washed, natural, anaerobic, and more experimental processes. Specialty microlots can spend up to 28 days drying, switching between raised beds and patios to control temperature and airflow. Washed coffees typically spend a week on raised beds before finishing on patios, while naturals and anaerobic lots are dried more slowly under canopy to keep temperatures around 35°C. Anaerobic fermentations range from 18 to 36 hours for standard lots, extending up to 120 hours for nitrogen maceration experiments, with pH and temperature monitored throughout. Some fusion fermentations use specific cultures, but batches are only repeated if the flavour can be matched year on year.

Last season, Mr Purnesh invested in 1000t of a mushroom-based organic compost, alongside reused mucilage and estate-produced manure to improve soil structure and nutrient availability. Regular soil analysis keeps pH close to 6.5 in an environment where heavy rainfall constantly drives acidity. Potassium is applied specifically to improve cherry size and retention, reducing premature drop during erratic weather. He really raved about the mushroom compost and found it so effective that this will now be standard practice despite the logistical challenges of sourcing it from the north and the costs. Wastewater from processing passes through a treatment system for three to four months before being reused for irrigation. Large on-farm reservoirs with a capacity of approximately 30 million litres, and perennial water sources support both fermentation and irrigation.

Processing has become a way to regain agency, respond to labour shortages, and create additional value, all while managing risk.

Collective models in fragile landscapes: Elements and FTAK

Moving into Kerala, the tone of the trip shifted. Many of the single estates we visited elsewhere have other sources of income that help sustain their coffee operations. With the producers in Wayanad, that safety net does not exist in the same way. Working with Elements and the Fairtrade Alliance Kerala (FTAK) brought us into a different set of realities of smaller farms, forest-fringe land, indigenous communities and tight ecological regulations.

Established in 2006, FTAK were the only Fairtrade-certified coffee cooperative in India for many years. DRWakefield were their second buyer and we have been working together since 2007.

For context, farms here average around 1.5 acres. Much of this land was redistributed by the government and allocated back to tribal and indigenous communities, and today around 1,500 farmers contribute coffee to the cooperative. The specific area is called Sugandagiri Hills, translating to “fragrant hills”, a reference to the cardamom plantations of this region, a government run initiative that failed. This land later came under the category of ‘vested forests’, where ownership was reclaimed by the state and then reassigned to tribal and indigenous communities as part of land reforms. The allocations came with strict conditions: native trees cannot be cut, shade management is not allowed, and farming is permitted only within the existing forest structure. As a result, the coffee here is relatively young at just under 20yo. Pepper, areca nut, banana, cacao, vegetables can all grow here for sustenance and to sell, and so a single farm might support dozens of species, but not at the cost of damaging the forest.

We met with Tommy and his team, and what we immediately understood was the impact of the Fairtrade Premium. Being really interested in how they spent it, Tommy very specifically shared some examples with us, and it helped explain why some farmers still defend the system even when market prices are high. A significant share goes into a revolving fund, providing interest-free or low-interest loans based on the capacity to replay and purpose. One of the most common uses of the funds by the producers was to procure cows, allowing them to diversify their income at a cost of £600, and a loan for this can be up to 3 years. They often also use funds to set up poultry farms and to produce honey. Some producers may also get a drying unit. This is significantly more expensive at around £2000-£2500. Beyond individual loans, a portion is held back for group initiatives, including women-led programmes and community-scale needs such as wells. Nurseries for pepper and coffee also sit under this umbrella.

On the flip side, producers spoke about the growing challenges around maintaining Organic certification. The new platform requires the coop to photograph the farmer on the farm and upload individual entries that can take up to 2 hours. The connectivity is limited, the portal is unreliable, and the time cost is heavy. When applied across several thousand organic farmers, this becomes difficult to manage alongside day-to-day farming and cooperative operations.

Producers also highlighted how if you were certified organic as per Indian standards, that translated to UK & EU. Today, differing requirements mean that the same coffee needs to meet multiple sets of expectations for the UK & EU separately, and workload without necessarily changing how the coffee is farmed. This has made it harder for some producers to justify the additional effort during high-price years, even though many remain committed to organic practices in principle.

Tommy brought 5 producers and the FTAK & Elements team together in an informal roundtable for an honest discussion. Over a cup of coffee, we had the opportunity to understand the biggest challenges they are facing as well as understand what has worked over the years. It gave space for disagreement, which is usually where you learn the most.

Certification became the centre of the discussion. Mr Raman, in particular, has been sceptical, as he struggles to justify the added effort at these high prices. He says if your farm is small, if boundaries are not clearly demarcated, if your neighbour farms differently, and if you are being asked to meet requirements that presume infrastructure you do not have, certification can feel less like support.

But another farmer pushed back, and it was a useful counterweight. He raised a point of how a couple years ago, during the largest festival in Kerala known as ‘Onam’, a harvest festival, that they could only celebrate due to the additional gains from the Fairtrade Premium. The support was not only in price, but in tools and access, drying sheets, collection coordination, and training, reframing the Fairtrade Premium as an insurance. You do not celebrate insurance in the good years, but you regret losing it when conditions turn. In that sense, the roundtable captured the real dilemma FTAK is facing: Fairtrade is still meaningful to many members, but the cost of proving compliance is rising fast, and the benefits can be less visible when prices are already high.

Looking ahead

Domestic consumption is growing at roughly 12% per year, and that alone has the potential to reshape the balance between export and local supply in ways we are only beginning to understand. If more coffee stays within the country, prices, availability, and producer decision-making will inevitably shift. At the same time, coffee production is in the middle of real change on the ground. New varietals are being planted, processing knowledge is deeper and more deliberate, and farmers are making choices based on what they can realistically manage in a volatile climate and labour market.

For me personally, visiting coffee farms in India for the first time was grounding. Indian coffee is not one system or one story. It is shaded agroforestry, smallholder forest coffee, large estates, cooperatives, exporters, and institutions all operating side by side, often under constraint, and often adapting in real time. Navigating this landscape is complex, and there are no shortcuts. But what stood out consistently was intent: producers paying attention, asking questions, and trying to build something that lasts.

We left India grateful to everyone who welcomed us, shared their time so openly, and trusted us with their stories and coffees. Thank you to the families, farmers, cooperatives, exporters, and institutions we spent time with. There is much more to learn, and plenty of work ahead, but it feels like a good moment to be paying closer attention.