Asia | No business like sow business

The world’s next food superpower

Farming in India should be about profits and productivity, not poverty

An elderly farmer walking in a village in Araku, India
Photograph: PICXY
|ARAKU VALLEY, ANDHRA PRADESH

FOR YEARS the Araku Valley, deep in the mountains on India’s east coast, was mired in poverty and rocked by Maoist violence. The government classifies most of its inhabitants as “particularly vulnerable tribal groups”; for generations they relied on slash-and-burn farming to scrape by. But now locals grow high-grade coffee that is sold at high prices to posh Europeans. Araku Coffee, the company that processes and markets their berries, runs cafés in fancy bits of Bangalore, Mumbai and Paris. The valley’s transformation is an agricultural success story. It is also a glimpse of what—with the right policies—the rest of rural India might achieve.

Chart: The Economist

Explore more

This article appeared in the Asia section of the print edition under the headline “No business like sow business”

How to raise the world’s IQ

From the July 13th 2024 edition

Discover stories from this section and more in the list of contents

Explore the edition

More from Asia

America recreates a warfighting command in Japan

The threat from China hastens the biggest military transformation in the Pacific in decades

Taiwan is beefing up its military exercises to counter China

The island’s new defence minister wants more practice and less performance


Sheikh Hasina faces her biggest crisis in years

Bangladesh’s prime minister shuts down the country


A weakened Narendra Modi subsidises jobs and doles out pork

The prime minister has had to compromise after a disappointing election

Is this a new age of warrior Japan?

The country is spending more on its armed forces. But not everyone is on board

The epic bust-up between China and India could be ending

Witness calm in the Himalayas, diplomatic charm offensives and thickening trade links