I would like to introduce to you, Mr. Ivor Bull, a gentleman and a pioneer Coffee Planter, who made a significant impact in stabilizing coffee prices in South India.

Mr. Ivor Bull - Coffee Planter

Born to a Norwegian father and an English mother in the year 1894, he completed his schooling at Glasgow and became a farmer in Australia.

A First World War veteran, he suffered serious injuries during the war with the Australian Imperial Army.

His first job in India was with a rubber plantation company in old Travancore. He later moved to Consolidated Coffee Estates, incorporated in Great Britain.

A person with great understanding of humankind, he served his company, the people of Coorg (who took to him as he did to them) and the farming community with great foresight and commitment.

In the year 1936, he was appointed head of the Sterling Company, M/s Consolidated Coffee Ltd, which was the largest professionally managed coffee grower of the time.

Coffee Beans

The Second World War created a great crisis in the coffee industry resulting in the disappearance of the export market for the same. As a result, un-exported coffee was dumped in the home market. It was Mr. Bull’s foresight that steered the industry through this crisis.

Mr. Ivor Bull was also one of the main visionaries responsible for the creation of the coffee ‘pooling system’ (a system where everyone pools their coffee together and markets it using a cooperative). His handling of the surplus pooling system gained him the confidence of coffee growers. His pooling system was in existence up until the mid-1990s.

A keen conservationist, he contributed to the preservation of the sacred groves of Coorg (devarcadoos), known for its unique biological richness.

Picture of the Jackfruit (Artocarpus heterophyllus) tree.

He was also thought to be responsible for the preservation of the ‘Jack’ tree. He strongly opposed the axing of the jackfruit tree from coffee estates, a fad advanced by some leading technically-sound coffee planters of the time. Hence he contributed to the co-existence of this beautiful tree with today’s coffee plantations.

In these days of ‘bird-sung’ coffee (an expression implying the ripening of coffee due to the melody of birds), Mr. Ivor Bull’s lessons on the coffee ecology of India hold a special significance.

After his return to England, he settled down to community work and full time farming at Suffolk. His daughter Sonja and her husband Russel also farmed with him. He died in the year 1971 at the age of 77.

Even to this day, Mr. Ivor Bull is spoken of with awe and admiration by people whose lives he had touched in Coorg.

Achayya Mukattira

Mr. Achayya Mukattira is a planter engaged in Corporate farming in South India for about a decade. He has worked with crops such as Tea, Coffee, Pepper, and Cardamom and possesses sound knowledge regarding landscaping and ornamental plant culture. He has been a farmer since 1996, tending a small ancestral coffee plantation in a village called Arapattu, in South Kodagu. He spends a major portion of his time on his farm and feels ‘one’ with nature during these occasions.

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