Ever tried Arabica from Chikhaldara?

In Chikhaldara a coffee plantation spans across a hundred acres thriving for decadesmdashfirst planted by British officers and later by the Roman Catholic Mission Yet you wonrsquot see its coffee make its way to specialty coffee shops across MaharashtraThe common perception of coffee in India is that it can only be grown in South India But farmers and landscape designers are experimenting with the crop The result small but lush plantationsMaharashtrarsquos coffee began to grow all thanks to an experimental lot In Chikhaldara English officer James Mulheran brought coffee plants from Kerala and planted them first at his bungalow Between 186061 the coffee took root Later Father Thevnet who started the Roman Catholic Mission in 189798 saw coffeeas a means to generate employment and developed the plantation by 1910Like Chikhaldara around 199697 Krushibhusan Shri Tukaram Pundlikrao Borade first experimented with coffee on his farm in Nashik It wasnrsquot an impulse decision but a carefully planned one Borade spent years growing a forest cover with Silver Oak trees The shade from the trees offered exactly what coffee plants need to grow Other plants were sown too mainly black pepper and pineapples As the sevenacre big plantation thrived it made Borade a pioneer in developing a multicrop pattern in MaharashtraUsing Silver Oak Farm as a case study Swati Aringale a landscape designer and Boradersquos nieceinlaw is currently working on a farm in Karjat and has sown the coffee seeds She plans to add a processing unit onsite as well Previously she has successfully grown coffee at a private farm in KamshetIn Mulshi Ashwin Paranjpe an organic farmer and founder of Gorus Forest Farm grows coffee and packs it for retail under his label Wof Zerash Paranjpersquos parents bought a 10acre piece of hilly land in 2002 and the seeds for his coffee plantation came from his greatgrandfather and grandmother His greatgrandfather Haribhau Paranjpe was a botanist who worked as a horticulture officer with the Bombay Presidency and had been deputed to Mesopotamia in 1919 Upon his return to India he brought back a few Arabica seeds that he sowed in his backyard Those coffee saplings lent seeds that were planted at Ashwinrsquos grandmotherrsquos home in Pune It is seeds from these plants that were eventually sown at Gorus Forest FarmAt first Paranjpe planted 150 coffee seedlings at the farm Later he noticed that the birds in the forest started liking the sweet coffee cherries which matured in December and January ldquoThey would select the best and sweetest coffee cherries eat the sweet pulp and the seed would pass through their gut and drop on the forest floorrdquo he says The following September Paranjpe noticed numerous tiny seedlings of coffee sprouting on the forest floor He collected them put them in nursery bags filled with a mixture of forest soil and cowdung manure and planted them the following monsoon ldquoThe seedlings that grew from the coffee cherries eaten by birds exhibited exceptional vigour after germination and were very healthyrdquo he says Paranjpe by now had researched the origin of the coffee plants he had which led him to discover that this variety of coffee came from the Kafa region of Ethiopia where birds had first sown the coffee Naturally when naming the coffee brand he chose Wof Zerashmdasha special phrase in the Ethiopian language Kafi Noonoo that means ldquosown by birdsrdquoBut how is it possible for coffee to grow in the state seeing as the climate is different from that of South India Aringale explains ldquoTo grow coffee you need two things One a protected forest cover And two under that cover one needs topsoil mulching In most of these regions now the rock has been weathered and the topsoil has just gone away So one has to look at the topsoil very closely to get that plantation thrivingrdquo She adds that for coffee and most other plants that thrive under a forest cover the topsoil needs mulching Farmers use mulch a layer of materials like grass clippings straw and bark chips to cover the top layer of soil to help it retain its moisture and improve fertilityWhile this is more or less achievable Aringale says that the biggest challenge is Maharashtrarsquos climatemdashespecially in the Maval region Arabica coffee trees need a canopy of trees creating shade high relative humidity and an ideal temperature range of 22260C Paranjpe says ldquoIt is obvious that our climatic conditions are far from ideal for growing Arabica coffee and thus one would expect that this plant will not grow well in Maharashtra On the contrary our experience has shown us that we can grow excellent Arabica coffee in the Northern side of Western Ghats of Maharashtrardquo Naturally some measures have to be taken to ensure that the coffee plantation thrives as one canrsquot simply rely on the monsoonPiciStockldquoIt is necessary to provide supplementary irrigation to the coffee plants through a hose pipe and groundmounted sprinklers as well as increase the humidity of the air by using microsprinklers during summerrdquo adds ParanjpeIf Maharashtrarsquos coffee is thriving why is it missing from specialty coffee shops in the country The answer is simple A lack of knowledge of coffee processing methods Despite how expansive the plantation in Chikhaldara is the coffee from there is retailed for filter kaapi or as green beans only without roasting ldquoAt Chikhaldara we mostly grow Arabica coffee and itrsquos sent across Maharashtra to Nashik Pune Nagpur and other cities But at our retail shop when people visit wersquove been seeing an increasing demand for green coffee as it helps with weight lossrdquo says Sunil Jambekar a manager at the plantationAt Silver Oak Farms too Aringale says they have mostly retailed coffee for the South Indian filter Jaykrut Shah barista trainer corporate at Coffee By Di Bella says ldquoMaharashtra farmers first need to be educated on fermentation and processing coffee Only then will they be able to offer specialty coffee In the South the state governments have provided that education to farmers decades ago which is why you will see coffee from South Indian estates at specialty coffee shopsrdquoSwati Aringale and Jaykrut ShahArigale says that the focus on sugarcane and paddy farming is so high in Maharashtra that most other crops are ignored ldquoWe can have native planting like Indian timber sheesham or Mahuamdash all of these offer a brilliant forest cover These will form amazing mulch in the topsoil of the forest cover bed And then you can have coffee underneath and other creeper varieties Also we need flowering varieties because a lot of chemical farming is leading to pollinators becoming extinctrdquo she saysAnother reason why Maharashtrarsquos coffee is not highly commercialised is because of the yield it offers Speaking about his farm Paranjpe says ldquoWe do not use any chemicals and provide minimal irrigation and pruning so our yields are as low as 8090 kg of green beans per acre which is about 20 per cent of the yields obtained in commercial coffee plantations in South India The yield of our coffee may be very low but its quality characteristics are excellent and our coffee has consistently scored 8587 points on the Qgrading scalerdquo Paranjpersquos specialty coffee Wof Zerash is perhaps one of the only specialty coffees you can access thatrsquos grown in Maharashtra That is until Aringalersquos farm in Karjat begins to yield coffee and she sets up a processing unitldquoMaharashtra is still five to 10 years away from producing specialty coffee It will take some government efforts to teach new practices Then specialty coffee from the state can come into the marketrdquo says Shah Is anyone listening