Coffee or stream?


May 1st to 3rd
Camp: Ponnampet, Coorg
The notable thing about Coorg this summer – indeed the only notable thing – was that it had no flowing water. 
The streams, the rivers, the copiousness of flow had vanished to leave behind the narrow sand-mined gulleys and stagnant, shallow green pools of dirty water and exposed, burning rock.  There are no recent signs of otter activity, though I did come across some otter spraint at one location.  Just where have they gone?  

This is not the Coorg we know, where most of the headwaters of the rivers of South Karnataka originate (including, by extension, the Hemavathi, a short sprint away).  What is happening to Coorg in the long term ecologically is a precursor of what will happen to the plains, just as the tumble of water down the Iruppu falls is a precursor to its arrival downstream. 

Some planters blame the absence of rain – ‘there has been not a drop since end-November,’ they say, with some justification.   Yet, can that alone account for the parchedness of soil?  In 2015, the rainfall was bountiful; parts of South Coorg received 6000 millimetres of rain.  If a pit was dug that was one metre square and a metre deep and was harvested six times during the rainy season, that would translate to 6000 litres, enough to sustain two people for these months of drought.  Drought in Coorg sounds, sadly, oxymoronic.   

Yet, as I travelled, met loads of people and saw the leaf of the Robusta coffee wither away in patches that were not being irrigated with ground water (which itself is rapidly depleting), the only question in my mind was, ‘How is this possible?’  I refuse to accept the ‘no-rain-for-six-months’ theory, because (pun intended) it holds no water. 
And, sure enough, the reasons surface, just as, at some point, the otters will as well.

What we cannot control is rainfall. 
What we can control is water absorption, retention and usage.   

Over the last few years, Coorg has been rapidly failing in all the three areas under human control  and, if urgent remedial measures are not taken, the planting industry is staring at a rather bleak future.   
To absorb water, you need sand.  Yet, the mining of sand in Coorg has reached a point of almost complete resource depletion, ie, there is hardly any sand left. 
No sand, no absorption and lesser percolation and retention.  The water flows faster, the streams dry up quickly.  
The result is a deep gulley, with small pools. 
…and, as the sand is rapidly disappearing, the fish that use sand to lay eggs, are going as well.
Planters must take the lead to stop the mining of sand from Coorg streams.  For their own sake.
Secondly, to harvest running water, you need tanks by the side of rivers and streams. These tanks must be deeper than the stream.  Coorg has an added asset which is in disuse: paddies that supported organic rice historically and the now-endangered koile meen, a small fish that lived in the paddies in the monsoon months preceding harvest and were then harvested.  These paddies were large water retention structures in the valleys of Coorg, with the overflows from one paddy flowing into another lower down. 
Some paddies have become commercial housing plots and others have oil palm plantations (a madness that has now stopped by and large). A few are actively planted, albiet with hybrid rice that needs chemicals as nourishment.  Yet, there is considerable potential here to harvest and retain thousands of tonnes of water as many paddies lie abandoned. The urgent need is to consider the paddies as water harvesting structures, essential for water security.  At the same time, every plantation, independent of its access to the river, must harvest water by creating irrigation tanks, but few that lie along the river do so.  This onus is on the planter, for his crop in future years is likely to be at stake if he doesn’t secure his water needs. 

The third part – and here is where long term thinking is essential – is usage.  Much of the area under coffee in Coorg is Robusta.  In the past two decades, due to the very high incidence of white stem borer and leaf rust a majority of the coffee farmers converted their Arabica farms into Robusta farms, without taking into account the moisture requirements of Robusta. Among the Robusta’s and Arabica’s, the Arabica’s are more drought tolerant and can withstand drought up to the end of April. Robusta’s are more sensitive to moisture stress the irrigation requirement for robusta is very high. For irrigating one acre of robusta up to a depth of one-inch (one acre inch), an estimated 22,660 gallons (about 85,000 litres) of water is required
(source: www.ecofriendlycoffee.org)
Just 12 acres needs a million litres of water
per irrigation.  Translated to domestic usage needs, this could support a town of 4000 people for a day. 
Robusta must be irrigated twice, possibly thrice, between the Nov period and the first rains.  This year, there being no rainfall since November, many planters have resorted to a fourth, even a fifth irrigation.  At a landscape level, the impact of an additional irrigation is humungous: twelve thousand acres draws a billion litres of fresh water, a miniscule fraction of which reaches the streams again.
So, again, is it the absence of rain that is to blame? Here’s where the root cause analysis must go a step further back.

A few years ago, planters began to thin their shade, to lop their trees, often remove them and plant silver oak in their place, in an effort to increase productivity.  This, they knew, was short term thinking:in the long run, productivity comes down, often drastically, leaf litter runs short and the estate needs more nutrients.
The lopping, and the consequent increased penetration of sunlight, has meant that more irrigation was needed every day to keep the plants alive.  So, removal of branches -> increased sunlight -> increased stress on the plant ->planter to the rescue with river irrigation -> the river runs dry -> the frogs, birds, crustaceans around water are missing -> …as are the otters.  A classic example of unintended consequences.
So, the final need is to restore shade in coffee, which reduces summer irrigation needs.
This is not just a trip report, but a call to sustainable business, that provides space to the ecosystem, in as much as it supports thousands of livelihoods, now at risk from a changing climate.