Apple Unnati: Coca-Cola Intends To Strengthen Livelihood Of 5 Lakh Farmers
Madan Singh, a 57-year-old traditional apple farmer, was not ready to adapt that apple trees can be grown at mid-altitude. It was a dream for him to get a full fruit crop in just 12 months until Unnati started.
The scheme Unnati has been initiated by the multinational beverage corporation Coca-Cola with an aim to increase farmers' productivity by five times.
A farmer said that the project has changed our life. "We were not able to grow anything on the barren land, the IDHT team made this miracle happen", she added.
The company started the project with the central aim of enabling farmers to increase their productivity which can ultimately lead to a rise in their income. To actualise the project, Coca-Cola joined hands with Indo-Dutch Horticulture Technologies (IDHT), a Uttarakhand-based organisation directed by Sudhir Chadha passionately working towards the mutual aim.
The company started the project with the central aim of enabling farmers to increase their productivity which can ultimately lead to a rise in their income. To actualise the project, Coca-Cola joined hands with Indo-Dutch Horticulture Technologies (IDHT), a Uttarakhand-based organisation directed by Sudhir Chadha passionately working towards the mutual aim.
The Revolutionary Method
As a brand, its portfolio of fruit drinks is widely popular among the masses and hence Coca-Cola is India’s largest fruit buyer and has expressed a continued increase in demand. A key pillar of Coca-Cola’s ESG priorities - through its Fruit Circular Economy initiative in India aims to aid the Indian agri-ecosystem by enhancing farming efficiency, strengthening forward linkages and addressing poor technology adoption and fruit wastage in the horticulture sector.
Coca-Cola recognises farmers to be its true suppliers for key ingredients and values the partnership by focusing on their overall well-being. Under the project, demonstration farms have been set up across the states. The land has been offered by the local farmers whereas Coca-Cola in partnership with implementation partner IDHT extended a demo setup of ¼ of an acre infused with saplings of different apple varieties, supporting poles, covering hail net and irrigation structure at a subsidised cost of up to 80 per cent wherein a demo farm costs up to INR 5 lakh excluding land.
“We invested around three years in research and development, partnering with the right partners to offer the right model to the farmers. Had we failed to win their trust at once, there was no way they were coming back to us,” Aditya Panda, senior manager, CSR and Sustainability, Coca-Cola INSWA mentions while speaking about the apprehensions before approaching the local farmers.
Winning the trust of local farmers has been the biggest challenge they faced in order to execute the initiative on real ground, Coca-Cola’s Aditya Panda expresses. According to the beneficiaries, the new technology-driven demo farms turned out to be a revolutionary farming setup as they are extremely productive. In these Demo farms, the saplings are supposed to be planted at a distance of 1 meter which makes 100-120 plants per 1011.74 square meters. To save water and adequate watering, the drip irrigation concept has been adopted. Presently, with apples, the popular varieties that favour Uttarakhand as its producer, include Delicious, Scarlett Super, Gala and King Roat.
Coca-Cola’s Larger Aim And Nation-Wide Impact
India’s average apple productivity is nearly half of the global average and Uttarakhand, despite its favourable climate and vast available land for greenfield apple cultivation, has a productivity of 3-4 tonnes per hectare per annum, which is half the nation’s average productivity. This is what led to the initiation of the Unnati Apple project in the Uttarakhand region.
The project was launched in 2018 under the umbrella of Coca-Cola’s corporate social responsibility (CSR) with a budget of INR 4.13 crore. It aims at increasing apple productivity in India by bringing global best practices primarily focusing on the ultra-high-density plantation (UHDP), leading to a substantial increase in quality, productivity and profitability per unit of land, hence significantly increasing farmers’ income.
It would also act as a catalyst to help India in achieving self-sufficiency in apple production. Unnati Apple aims at a five-fold increase in apple production in India, primarily in Uttarakhand, by introducing good agricultural practices, focusing on UHDP, leading to a substantial increase in farmers’ income. Thanks to this project, the income among the farming community has increased to 8-10 lakh per year.
According to Sudhir Chadha, Director, Indo-Dutch Horticulture Technologies, Project Apple Unnati has the power and potential to address the issue of migration and bring it down to 90 per cent. The project also aims to reverse the migration of farmers from cities to the valley and adopt cultivation as a white-collar profession.
The project Apple Unnati has been extended to the union territory of Jammu and Kashmir, and Himachal Pradesh. Moreover, Coca-cola’s CSR project Unnati is a wide-range project and has been extended to 11 other states benefiting 3.5 lakh farmers which include- Unnati Orange (launched in 2016), Unnati Mango (launched in 2011), Unnati Grapes (launched in 2019) and Unnati Lichi (launched in 2019).
