What another planter saw walking our Robusta blocks

A Kannada planting channel spent a morning walking our Robusta blocks in the rain and put the whole thing online, unedited enough that the estate has to stand behind what is in it. Karthik Pattada filmed it with Naresh and Akhil; the estate is Nandipura & Indravally at Mudigere, Chikmagalur, and the person answering the questions is Shricharan Jayaram. What follows is what the film records, written down so it can be read rather than watched.

Key takeaways

• Nandipura & Indravally Estates was a complete Arabica zone until the 1980s, when the current owner's father planted one of the first Robusta blocks in the area.
• Robusta plantings on the estate today range from two years old to thirty-five and forty years old.
• The estate keeps thirty to forty shade trees an acre, mostly indigenous forest trees rather than silver oak.
• Eight ponds have been built on the estate since 1996, after the low crop of 1991-92 settled the question of whether Robusta here could be grown without irrigation.
• The pulping line is built for twenty-five tonnes of cherry a day, at six to seven tonnes an hour.

Why did an all-Arabica estate plant Robusta?

Because two poor Arabica years made the case, and a trip made the decision.

Before the 1980s, Nandipura was Arabica end to end. After a couple of low Arabica crops, Shricharan's father went to Balehonnur, saw Robusta growing there, and came back and planted it — one of the first Robusta blocks in this area. Forty years on, with labour harder to find and the weather less dependable, the film's verdict on that decision is that it reads as the right one.

The Robusta on the ground is not one age. Some blocks go back thirty-five and forty years. Some were planted two years ago. One block still standing is from the grandfather's time; part of it was replanted this season and more is due next.

How much shade does Robusta want?

Enough, and no more. The observation the film keeps returning to is that the shade is held at exactly what Robusta needs — not thinned, not smothered.

Asked how many trees an acre, the answer is thirty to forty. What is unusual is what they are. Silver oak, the standard shade tree on most estates, is scarce here. What holds the canopy instead are the forest trees the British-era plantings left standing — the same jackfruit, ficus, fig and Malabar plum that shade the rest of the estate.

What is a good crop here?

About thirty bags an acre, and the estate says so without inflating it.

Twenty-eight to thirty bags is described in the film as quite satisfied and happy. The reasoning is given plainly: expect too much from a Robusta plant and the plant weakens. That is a decision about the next crop as much as this one, and it is the kind of number most estates would rather round up.

Where does the water come from?

Eight ponds, dug over thirty years, and a sprinkler system rather than drip.

The turning point was 1991-92 — one of the lowest crops the estate had ever picked. The conclusion drawn was that Robusta at this scale cannot be grown on rain alone, and from 1996 the money went into ponds. There are now eight of them. On the one the film stops at, three submersible pumps of twenty horsepower each — sixty horsepower — feed the lines, with a 150 KVA generator behind them. The generator runs the pulper first and the sprinklers after. It carries seven to eight sprinklers on flat ground and six to seven where there is head to fight.

Drip was tried. Spot-jet went into one block and was abandoned: gaur and elephants did enough damage to the lines to end the experiment. The estate is unfenced to wildlife, which is a growing method here and also a constraint, and the irrigation had to be built around that rather than against it.

How big is the pulping line?

Twenty-five tonnes of cherry a day — 25,000 kilos — moving six to seven tonnes an hour.

It is sized ahead of the crop on purpose. The plan behind it is that the coffee coming off these blocks increases, and a pulper that cannot keep up on a heavy day is the bottleneck that ferments a lot before anyone decides it should. The same principle sits behind pulping the day it is picked: the machinery exists so that nothing waits overnight.

When does Robusta get replanted?

Arabica on a twenty-year cycle. Robusta, in Shricharan's reckoning, closer to forty-five — if the coffee is picked properly.

There is a view among planters that Robusta is best left alone. The film's answer is that a plant carried to a big crop year after year weakens over time, and that the establishment is the part that matters: get it right at replanting and the block does not need rescuing later. The replanted material also lets newer selections onto the estate. Asked what one block is, the answer is short: 274.

What about weeding, and everything else?

Weedicide on the roads, because there is no alternative at this size. Inside the blocks, weeding is manual, and the film is straight about the cost — one pass around a property this size takes a year, and while that is happening every other job on the estate falls behind. The plants are close-set, which is why the labour is kept at the level it is.

The rest of what the camera passes is the same estate the rest of this site describes from the other direction: pepper in more than one variety, arecanut planted on both sides for shade with seedlings brought from Sagara, and a nursery where the estate raises its own coffee and pepper plants rather than buying them in. The line given for why is that the selection of seed material is the most important decision on a plantation, which is a strange thing to say until you have watched someone replant a block their grandfather planted.

What another planter takes away from it

Karthik Pattada's own summary of the morning is not a list of numbers. It is three things, and they are worth setting down in his order rather than ours.

The blocks are managed as one system. Ages from two years to forty, sitting in blocks laid out and worked uniformly rather than as a patchwork of whatever each corner needed that year. Shade is held where Robusta wants it instead of being maximised for its own sake. Irrigation is being extended, and where a method failed — the spot jets in that one block — it was replaced with mainlines and laterals rather than defended. Old blocks are on a replanting plan instead of being nursed through a long decline.

The crop is planned for the next decade, not this season. Thirty bags an acre is a target the estate is willing to say out loud precisely because it is not the highest number the ground could be pushed to. Push a plant past what it can carry and the plant weakens, which costs more crop over a plant's life than a good year returns. The same reasoning runs through the planting material, the selections kept block by block, and the pepper and arecanut interplanted rather than the coffee being grown in isolation.

Labour is the constraint everything else is designed around. Availability is the hardest problem on any plantation in this district now, and the answer here is not more hands. It is clear blocks, systematic operations, piped water and machinery sized ahead of the crop, so that the people who do come can work efficiently. The older way of running an estate assumed labour would always be there. This one does not.

Put together it is one idea: healthy plants, appropriate nutrition, controlled shade, efficient irrigation, realistic yields and organised labour, held in balance. The decision made a decade ago in favour of ponds is the same decision being made now in favour of replanting and better irrigation — the estate has consistently chosen the version of a plantation that is still productive in twenty years over the one that produces most this year.

What the film does not show

The pulper running. It was filmed in September, in rain, before the crop. The channel says it is coming back in December to see the line working, which is the honest version of what this video is: the estate between crops, not at work.

The other thing it does not show is a cup. Nothing here tells you what this year's Robusta tastes like — for that you need a sample, not footage. If you want one, tell us what you are looking for. If you would rather walk it yourself, visits are by request and cost nothing.