The Bengaluru coffee brand serving an environment-friendly cuppa

To think none of this would have happened if a brutal allergy attack hadn’t changed the trajectory of Bose's PhD research. In the summer of 2010, Bose was a PhD candidate at the Department of Geography, University of Cambridge, looking to explore community-based conservation efforts in Spiti Valley, Himachal Pradesh. But one morning, she woke up with a swollen throat in the throes of an allergy attack that required immediate medical attention. "I needed to be ten minutes away from a hospital in case this happened again," shares Bose.

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She said goodbye to the high altitudes of Spiti and changed her research topic altogether. As a trained human geographer with a keen interest in community-based conservation, Bose then chose to focus on understanding how incentivising conservation efforts encourages better practices for land use.

Zooming in on coffee farms in Kodagu, Karnataka, for her research, Bose compared farms that obtained the Rainforest Alliance (RA) Certification, a global environmental certification program for sustainability in agriculture, with farms that were not certified. Her goal was to understand if the certification process benefited farmers and led to on-ground biodiversity conservation measures. "Coffee provides the right canvas to examine these intricacies. It’s widely consumed, but it is also a premium product like chocolate, and there is a growing interest in where the coffee is coming from and how it's grown," she says. Her research revealed that such certification programs are often designed with large coffee producing countries, like Brazil and Colombia, in mind. “India's coffee comes from farms that are ecologically different. Thus, conservation approaches as well as certifications need to be relevant to our farms," says Bose.

“As we don't have rain throughout the year, coffee was largely grown under the shade of trees with their canopies protecting these crops from hot and dry conditions," shares Bose. Chennai’s M. S. Swaminathan Research Foundation discovered when British colonisers cleared forests to plant coffee for commercial consumption, it encouraged monocropping and increased yields by growing it under the sun. Bose realised not only did this impact coffee quality, but also depleted biodiversity.

To counter this and fill the gap between certifications tailored for the West and on-ground production practices unique to India, she set up Black Baza Coffee Co. in 2016.

More than farm to cup

Single-origin, roasted in small batches and grown in the shade of native trees, like Ficus, Jamun and Terminalia, without pesticides and chemical inputs, a cup of coffee from Black Baza is many things.

Bose primarily works with smallholder farmers who cultivate coffee on the edge of forests. “The average land holding is anywhere between half an acre to two acres of land," she shares.

In the Biligirirangana Hills (BR Hills), Karnataka, they work with the indigenous Soliga community to source their coffee. In Nilgiris, the company partners with Aadhimalai Pazhangudiyinar Producer Company Limited, which sources forest and agricultural products from indigenous communities in the Nilgiris Biosphere Reserve. In Tamil Nadu’s Palani Hills, Black Baza sources coffee from a group of smallholder, marginal farmers.

They continuously monitor the biodiversity in these farms, documenting the avian, mammal and other species that frequent them. "For example, in the Palani Hills, having gaurs in and around the farmlands is a good indicator of a healthy ecosystem, whereas in the BR Hills, they look for smaller creatures like bees, earthworms and termites," explains Bose.

The enterprise features nine high-altitude Arabicas, two mid and low-elevation Robustas and two Arabica-Robusta blends from 650 smallholder and marginal farmers across the Western Ghats of Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Kerala on its website, blackbazacoffee.com. The Galaxy Frog, for example, is a medium roast arabica that tastes of molasses, green grapes and lemon zest and the Luna is a sun-dried robusta with notes of dark chocolate, spice and tobacco.

Fire up the coffee pot

Annually, Indians consume about 91,000 tonnes of coffee, as per the Ministry of Commerce. With an emphasis on terroir and unique flavour profiles, consumers are now zooming in on where the beans come from. Increasing demand for specialty coffee is a key trend shaping India’s coffee industry, notes the market research organisation, Custom Market Insights.

Additionally, with increasing pressures of climate change, regenerative methods of cultivating coffee are gaining attention across farms. “But for many smallholder farmers, these practices are a part of their processes for generations," shares Bose.

In India, coffee growers like Balmaadi in Nilgiris, Tamil Nadu, cultivate it under the canopy of native trees. Specialty coffee company ARAKU Coffee also focuses on regenerative cultivation methods and empowering smallholder, indigenous farmers in Araku Valley, Andhra Pradesh.

Founder & President of Bengaluru-based coffee consulting laboratory Coffeelab Ltd., Sunalini Menon, shares that the award is a special moment for India’s coffee landscape. Menon was recently appointed to the SCA Board of Directors, the first time that a coffee expert from the country has joined the Board. She says, “India’s signature feature is coffee grown under the shade of trees. I have been to so many countries and have never seen the extent of plant diversity one observes on Indian coffee farms. It’s not just the trees; so many floral and faunal species co-exist with coffee plants, and all of these add value to the environment and the coffee beans. Sustainability and biodiversity are an integral part of India’s coffee-growing culture, and an Indian company receiving this award is extremely valid. We deserve it."

Sharmila Vaidyanathan is a freelance writer from Bengaluru.

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