I had always heard about Wayanad as one of the biggest tea producers in India, but when I actually visited this beautiful place I realized that coffee is also produced in abundance. Wherever we went in Wayanad, we found acres of lands covered by coffee plantations. This Photo Journey shares some information about coffee plantations in Wayanad region of Kerala.
Coffee production in India is dominated in the hilly terrains of South Indian states. Karnataka produces the max followed by Kerala. Indian coffee is said to be the finest coffee grown in the shade rather than direct sunlight anywhere in the world. Our host at Meenangadi had huge coffee farm around his homestay and he shared the fact about coffee in shadow. Most of the the plants were in shades of various trees including black pepper, jackfruit, coconut & rubber trees.
Above is the view from out cottage at Treasure Trove, which was surrounded by coffee plantations all around.
After coming back from Wayanad, I read more about Coffee plantations in India and got to know that we have approximately 2.5 lac coffee growers and majority of them are small growers. Major part of the coffee grown in India exported to Germany, Russian, Spain, Belgium, Slovenia, United States, Japan, Greece, Netherlands, France and Italy.
There are two methods to process Coffee - dry processing and wet processing. Dry processing is the traditional method of drying in the sun which is favoured for its flavour producing characteristics. This what we witnessed during our stay in Wayanad.
Indian coffee, grown mostly in southern India under monsoon rainfall conditions, is also termed as “Indian monsooned coffee. Two well known species of coffee grown are the Arabica and Robusta.
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