The Climate Smart Coffee Project is an initiative under the aegis of the Kerala Development and Innovation Strategic Council (K-DISC) and the Department of Industries of the Kerala Government. The project proposes aggregation of the Robusta produced in Wayanad and centralized processing to produce clean and roasted coffee of standard quality. With thisaggregation and standardized processing, the coffee produced can be branded as authentic ‘Wayanadan Kappi’ and marketed domestically as well as in the European markets.

The initiative will have two broad areas of intervention. One would be establishment of processing facilities in a “Hub and Spoke” model to establish state-of-the-art processing facilities for coffee that will be available to coffee farmers to enable them to access higher value for their produce. A second broad area is about offering technical support to improve the quality of their produce, and provide solutions faced by them caused by climate change
and other environmental factors. This is sought to be developed through a network of institutions of excellence in the disciplines of biological sciences and engineering. The project will function on the quadruple helix innovation model: Academia, Industry, Government, and Citizens.

Aggregation of farmers through their own platforms or cooperative societies is envisaged in the effort to bring economies of scale in the operation. As the erection and commissioning of the main processing facilities will take between 24 to 30 months, activities in establishing outreach with the farmers through the Local Government agencies and offering troubleshooting and consultancy services to the farmers as well as seeding efforts for developing the market for a branded specialty coffee are in progress.