Darjeeling’s iconic tea is battling climate unpredictability even as its picturesque hills brew a new story—coffee.
Shrubs bearing glossy, evergreen ovate leaves and cherry-like beans are steadily weaving themselves into Darjeeling’s landscape, once solely defined by its rolling expanses of lush-green tea bushes.
Over 500 acres of land in Darjeeling and Kalimpong districts is currently under coffee plantation, a noteworthy progress considering that the pilot project was started on a land parcel measuring two acres in Latpanchar area only about a decade ago.
Arjun Rai, from Kalimpong’s ginger belt of Sangsey, says the transition from tea to coffee has helped him make profits.
COMP director Dr Samuel Rai says when they could not get a proper price for the raw cherries, we manually pulped, roasted and powdered the beans.
Rai planted Arabica coffee on around half-an-acre of fallow land in 2018-19. Last year, he produced around 100 kg of cherries. “I sold them to private buyers at an average price of Rs 50 per kg,” he said.
It takes three years for a coffee plant to bear cherries and six years to fully mature. Around 4.5 to 5 kg of cherries can be harvested annually from each matured plant.
“Coffee is now supplementing the income of many farmers in my locality. They are now encouraged to go for further expansion of the plantation area,” he said.
Government push
Enthused by the steady growth of coffee cultivation in the hills, the West Bengal government is drawing up a strategy to create more demand for the coffees from the state.
The panchayats and rural development department has been shortlisting farmers for advanced training.
Stating that the initial experimentation with the coffee cultivation has been successful, state’s panchayats and rural development department minister Pradip Majumder, the focus of the government will now be on sustainable production by creating adequate market linkages.
Many farmers who were into ginger and black cardamom cultivation are now diversifying into coffee hoping to get better returns than spices vulnerable to viral diseases.
Encouraged by the success of the experiment, the Gorkhaland Territorial Administration (GTA), a semi-autonomous council that governs the two hill districts of Darjeeling and Kalimpong, is planning further expansion of the coffee plantation area. The Directorate of Cinchona and Other Medicinal Plants (COMP) has been made the nodal agency for the ambitious plan to grow coffee in the land of tea.
The genesis
Incidentally, the two cash crops were introduced in the hills almost simultaneously by the Britishers in the 1840s.
While the experimental efforts with the tea were a huge success, the coffee failed to live up to the expectations, probably because the extreme cold and frosty climate of the hills then were not suitable for the coffee plantation.
The ideal temperature range for the plantation of Arabica variants of the coffee that grows in higher elevation is between 18°C and 23°C. It requires an annual rainfall of 160 to 250 centimetres.
This climatic condition is now more or less prevalent in Darjeeling district, which is getting warmer every year due to climate change.
A coffee flower. The ideal temperature range for the plantation of Arabica variants of the coffee that grows in higher elevation is between 18°C and 23°C. It requires an annual rainfall of 160 to 250 centimetres.
A recent report of an intergovernmental panel for climate change projected that the average annual temperature in Darjeeling will go up by 5.4 degrees Celsius by 2100, with about 90 per cent of the rise being projected to have occurred from 2015 onwards.
Kalimpong, which is located at a lower altitude than Darjeeling is said to be suitable for robusta coffee plantations. The ideal temperature for this variant should hover between 20°C and 30°C and the annual rainfall should be 100 to 200 centimetres.
“We ventured into coffee plantations as a pilot project at Latpanchar in Darjeeling district in 2014. Since then, we had been gradually increasing the plantation area every year,” COMP director Dr Samuel Rai recalled.
The COMP first tasted the success of its experiment in 2017 when around 500 kgs of ripened “cherries” of robusta coffee plants were harvested.
Next year, the harvest was one tonne.
“Since, we could not get a proper price for the raw cherries, we manually pulped, roasted and powdered the beans. The end product was then packaged and locally marketed. We also offered it to some ministers and secretaries seeking their feedback,” Dr Rai told The Federal, “The feedback was good,” he added promptly.
Then GTA secretary C Murugan, recognising the potential of the drive, sent a team to Coorg in Karnataka to study the feasibility of coffee plantation in the hilly terrains of Darjeeling.
After getting a positive report, he directed the COMP to select around 500 farmers to start the plantation by distributing saplings.
Around 7.20 lakh saplings were distributed among the farmers after giving them training from the Coffee Board in 2018. Saplings of Chandragiri variety of the Arabica coffee were brought from Karnataka’s Chikmagalur for the distribution.
Farmers are privately planting on around 345 acres of land. Around 1,000 farmers are engaged in the work.
In addition to farmers, the COMP is also doing its own plantation on around 194 acres of land.
“Our current yield is around six to seven tonnes of raw cherries or 2.5 to 3 tonnes of end-product. The farmers are also separately growing coffee. We don’t have an exact estimate of their harvest,” Dr Rai said. Around 95 per cent of the produce is of Arabica variant, which is more aromatic than Robusta coffee
The directorate has recently set up a small processing unit, taking another baby step towards full-fledged commercialisation of coffee in the hills. The reintroduction of the coffee in Darjeeling hills has an interesting anecdote.
The Britishers though abandoned their coffee project in the hills, some plants survived in the wild.
Dr Rai had collected some of the ripe cherries from the trees naturally grown in the area.
A Japanese lady who used to work at a project of the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) in Kalimpong took some of the cherries back home in 2003. She gave it to a coffee shop in Tokyo to examine the quality. The shop owner was impressed by its quality.
Her overwhelming feedback planted motivated Dr Rai to popularise coffee in the hills. While coffee is slowly digging its roots in the hills of West Bengal, tea is facing an existential challenge.
Coffee over tea
The production of the famed muscatel-flavoured tea has seen a steep decline in recent years, plunging to a historic low of just 5.6 million kilograms in 2024, the lowest in its 169-year legacy.
Those associated with the tea industry attributed the fall mainly to erratic weather patterns and changing rainfall cycles, besides some policy lacunae.
“For good tea production there should be a minimum difference of four degrees in night and day temperature and 80 to 90 per cent humidity,” said Chinmoy Dhar, manager of the Majherdabri Tea Estate.
A larger temperature difference helps promote amino acid accumulation and increase caffeine levels in tea leaves, which contribute to flavour.
Another crucial factor for the tea industry, according to the veteran tea manager, is the right amount of annual rainfall.
“The annual rainfall should be 120 to 140 inches (304 to 355 cm) and it should be more or less evenly spread over the year. But currently, the rainfall is erratic. Sometime within a short span a deluge of as high as 250 inches are witnessed, followed by a dry spell with less than 80 inches of rain. Even the season's pattern is changing,” Dhar pointed out.
All these factors are adversely impacting the tea industry not only in Darjeeling, but across India, Dhar said.
To combat the impact, the Tea Board has suggested measures like planting of drought tolerant cultivars, retaining adequate number of shade trees, creation of proper drainage systems and rain water harvesting for better water management and bringing changes in pest management, the government sources said.
The board has recently come out with a Plant Protection Code (PPC) to ensure responsible use of pesticides to minimize chemical reliance and maximise sustainable pest management practices though non-chemical approaches.
It has banned the use of 20 specific pesticide varieties in tea plantations as part of its strategy to combat the impact of climate change on the tea industry.
Dhar, however, said the banning of the chemical pesticide has become counterproductive in many gardens as non-chemical approaches are failing to effectively control pests, leading to crop damage.
Admitting the role of climate change in bringing down production, trade union leader and CPI(M)’s central committee member Saman Pathak said policy lapses on the part of tea-garden management are also aggravating the problem.
Workers in about 15 of the Darjeeling hills’ 70 functional gardens boycotted plucking the premier first flush leaves this year over a pending bonus issue, Pathak said. This will have serious implications on production, he added.
Capital changes from production to job creation is another factor responsible for the dip in production, according to Pathak.
He said most of the gardens are leasing out their land for tourism activities, adversely impacting their core business of tea production.
Will these multiple factors ailing the tea industry pave the way for the coffee to eventually replace it?
“I will not comment on this. This is a very sensitive issue,” Dr Rai said.
The way coffee is making inroads in the hills that possibility cannot be ruled out.
