AIMS’s Yellow Bourbon initiative has moved from first fruiting in 2024 to large-scale nursery expansion in 2026. Price, yield and market calculations now show what coffee must achieve to become a credible alternative to poppy.
On 15 November 2024, AIMS recorded the first fruiting of Yellow Bourbon coffee grown from seeds sown at Mapao Zingsho on 14 April 2022. By September 2026, AIMS reports thousands of nursery plants and many mature plants. The question is no longer whether Yellow Bourbon can grow in Manipur, but whether it can become a dependable legal livelihood for hill farmers.
Manipur has spent years searching for alternatives to illegal opium poppy cultivation. Enforcement can clear a field, but it cannot replace household income. A durable transition requires a crop that farmers can grow legally, sell reliably and build into a wider rural economy. Coffee cannot resolve every dimension of Manipur’s wider crisis, but it can address an important livelihood and environmental pressure where illegal cultivation has become economically attractive.
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AIMS and the long search for an alternative
The Mapao programme is an AIMS initiative rooted in earlier work on alternative plants for opium poppy. Yutaka Agatsuma-San, Chairman of Asia Supporting Organization, Alternative Plant for Opium Poppy (APOP), Japan, and Teruaki Watanabe-San, Director, TMH Green, have been central to that continuity. Agatsuma-San was associated in 2004 with the NPO Myanmar Substitutionary Medicinal Plants Project. APOP-supported agricultural assistance near Pyin Oo Lwin was documented from 2003, and a Japanese-supported project in 2008 added farmer training and Japanese grape seedlings. The lesson was simple: replacing an illicit crop requires technical support, a market and farmer confidence that the legal crop will pay.
Agatsuma-San and Watanabe-San repeatedly brought this experience to Manipur. On 16 February 2020, both participated as experts in the international workshop on ‘Alternative Plants for Opium-Poppy’ at Manipur University. On 2 March 2020, an AIMS delegation submitted a memorandum to the Governor of Manipur on alternative plants for poppy-growing areas. They joined another Manipur University interaction on 17 May 2022 and returned on 16 February 2023; Watanabe-San also served as a resource person in an NEC-sponsored international seminar on alternatives to illegal opium poppy cultivation on 28 March 2023. Laishram Radhakishore had already advocated coffee as an alternative on 10 February 2020 and reported on 14 March 2021 that about 1.81 lakh coffee plants were being planted by 226 farmers in 17 villages across seven districts under Coffee Board supervision.
AIMS then developed the Yellow Bourbon initiative at Mapao. The Mapao Zingsho Bamboo Park grew from a mass bamboo plantation programme inaugurated on 4 October 2021 with support from the North East Cane and Bamboo Development Council under the North Eastern Council, Ministry of Development of North Eastern Region, Government of India. Yellow Bourbon seeds were sown at the AIMS Bamboo Farm on 14 April 2022 under the guidance of Agatsuma-San and Watanabe-San with the AIMS team. First fruiting came on 15 November 2024; the much larger nursery and mature planting base reported in 2026 now makes economic performance as important as agronomic success.
What must coffee earn?
Coffee’s advantage is legality and longevity, not speed. Poppy provides faster short-term cash. Coffee requires an establishment period, but a productive plantation can provide repeated harvests and support nurseries, processing, roasting, packaging and specialty marketing. The Coffee Board’s current programme for coffee expansion in the North-Eastern Region uses a unit cost of Rs 2.25 lakh per hectare and provides 50 per cent subsidy support.
On 23 September 2026, the Coffee Board displayed the international ‘Other Milds’ Arabica indicator at 317.05 US cents per pound, equivalent to roughly ₹671 per kilogram of unroasted Arabica coffee beans. In Japan, Tully’s lists Brazilian Yellow Bourbon at 1,430 yen (₹874) for 200 grams, or 7,150 yen (₹4,371) per kilogram of roasted retail coffee.
Coffee versus poppy: the economic test
Poppy is harder to price because it is illegal and the market is opaque. One published Manipur field account reported that a 1.75-acre poppy field could produce about 5 kilograms of opium worth Rs 6.5 lakh, described as about five times cultivation cost. Converted only for policy comparison, that equals roughly Rs 9.18 lakh gross value per hectare, about Rs 1.84 lakh cultivation cost and about Rs 7.34 lakh estimated surplus.
The comparison is still useful. If Yellow Bourbon yields 600 kilograms of clean green beans per hectare, it would need about Rs 1,530 per kilogram to equal the historical poppy gross value of Rs 9.18 lakh per hectare before costs are compared. At Rs 1,340 per kilogram, 600 kilograms would generate Rs 8.04 lakh, leaving a gross-value gap of about Rs 1.14 lakh. That gap could be narrowed through higher coffee yield, a stronger specialty premium, intercrop income or a combination of the three. This is stronger than claiming that ordinary coffee is automatically more profitable than poppy.
Planning comparison between Yellow Bourbon coffee and Poppy
| Planning case | Price | Yield | Gross value/ha |
| Yellow Bourbon coffee – Commodity benchmark | Rs 671/kg | 600 kg | Rs 4.03 lakh |
| Yellow Bourbon coffee – Specialty case | Rs 1,000/kg | 600 kg | Rs 6.00 lakh |
| Yellow Bourbon coffee – High specialty case | Rs 1,340/kg | 600 kg | Rs 8.04 lakh |
| Historical poppy gross | Rs 1,530/kg | 600 kg | Rs 9.18 lakh |
. *Historical poppy figures are not a current official farmgate price.
How coffee can become a real alternative
The transition must be designed as a farm system, not a single-crop substitution. Ginger, turmeric, banana, pepper, vegetables and other suitable crops can provide earlier income while coffee matures. Coffee can also be grown with shade trees, fruits and spices, creating an agroforestry system that spreads risk and maintains more permanent vegetation on hill slopes. The proof of success must therefore be based on total household income, not only coffee price. Market access is equally important.
From plantation to a Manipur coffee economy
The 2026 expansion gives AIMS an opportunity to move from demonstration to a structured coffee programme involving the Coffee Board of India, universities, agricultural institutions, village organisations and farmer groups. Agatsuma-San’s Myanmar experience, Watanabe-San’s repeated engagement with Manipur, Radhakishore’s earlier advocacy and AIMS’s expanding nursery and field base form a useful continuum.
The calculations show the challenge clearly. Commodity coffee alone may not match the short-term attraction of poppy, but specialty Yellow Bourbon with good yields, intercrop income, quality processing and an assured market can narrow or potentially close the economic gap. Coffee should not be presented as a single solution. Its contribution is specific and practical: to make legal hill livelihoods strong enough that returning to poppy no longer makes economic sense. On International Coffee Day 2026, Manipur should not merely celebrate a cup of coffee; it should build the farms, skills, processing systems and markets behind that cup.
This article is based on information provided to Ukhrul Times by the Apunba Imagi Machasing. The content has not been independently verified, edited, altered, or modified by the publisher.
