Virus Attack Takes The Aroma Out Of Coffee
From: thehindu.com
The Indian coffee industry will take a long time to recover from the severe blow dealt by the pandemic on all commercial activities across the globe.
Most coffee growers in the country were already in deep debt after they were hit by excessive monsoon rains, floods, landslides and huge crop losses consecutively in 2018 and 2019. Again, during the December-March (2020) picking season, they could not sell or export much of their beans due to the lockdown. “The global coffee situation is grim as the entire coffee chain is shut due to COVID-19. A bulk of our coffee goes to Europe and cafés in all those countries are shut. Nobody in the coffee community has any visibility right now and no one knows how things are going to pan out for the industry. All these could lead to a decline in demand for the commodity in the export markets,’’ Anil Kumar Bhandari, president, India Coffee Trust (ICT) told The Hindu.
