A farmer from Rwampara Mbarara in western Uganda dries his coffee beans. PHOTO | MORGAN MBABAZI | NATION
The pressure is on in Uganda to get more youth and women
involved in the coffee value chain, starting with farming by using
smarter agronomy practices, as the country looks to increase production
to an ambitious 20 million bags by 2025.
Government
hopes increased volumes will help address the double problem of much
needed forex and job creation. Kampala is pumping billions of cash in
this effort through initiatives like Operation Wealth Creation through
the supply of seedlings to farmers.
Challenges
But
in the race to get there, Uganda’s path is littered with hurdles, the
first of which is that of an ageing workforce on the farms.
The
average age of a coffee farmer is 60 years, according to the 2015
Sustainability of the Coffee Sector in Africa report by the
International Coffee Organisation. This is in spite of over 80 per cent
of Uganda’s population still being under the age of 30 years while the
country’s median age is in the teen years.
“Youth
exodus to urban areas has created a shortage of labour because the old
people do not have the energy to farm,” said the executive director of
Uganda Coffee Farmers Alliance Tony Mugoya.
For now, most young people who are engaged in the coffee sector
prefer the tail end of the value chain, doing jobs like marketing,
branding and brewing of the beverage, rather than work that requires
them to get their hands dirty to produce the coffee in the first place.
“You
cannot isolate parts of the value chain and expect to increase
productivity and market. Farmers, scientists and marketing must work
together,” said the executive director of the National Union of Coffee
Agribusiness and Farm Enterprises (Nucafe), Joseph Nkandu.
In
addition, Uganda also faces increasing shortage of land — a challenge
that requires smarter methods of farming in order to produce higher
yields from the same land size.
Quadrupling output
In
2017, Uganda produced 5.2 million 60kg-bags and exported 4.6 million
60kg-bags, which earned Africa’s leading exporter and second largest
producer a record $544 million.
Uganda is now working with local and international experts in the sector to beat these odds.
The
country hopes to quadruple output in the next seven years, a feat that
would see it earn upwards of $2 billion annually from coffee exports
alone.
During the Youth and Women in Coffee annual
power talk convened in Kampala recently, local and international experts
said the solutions to increasing productivity and earnings are already
here.
The power talk, organised by the African Fine
Coffee Association and the farmer field school UTZ, brought together
over 300 young people engaged in the sector as entrepreneurs, roasters,
baristas and a few farmers.
Brazilian national
Eduardo Sampaio, the field representative of UTZ, said once the youth
are involved in the sector and trained in new models of farming, this
would raise productivity even without increasing the coffee acreage.
According
to Mr Sampaio, this was the case in Brazil where production increased
by 50 per cent over the past 10 years without expansion of the acreage.
Mr
Nkandu agrees with this, arguing that the sector in Uganda needs
intensification. This involves using less land to plant more coffee
trees in a smart modern way that is guided by science and research.
Land usage
“If
we are to produce 20 million bags, how much land do we need? Experts
have said we would need two million hectares,” he said. “If we apply
science, reduce spacing and boost productivity, we can still use the
little land we have to increase production.”
Uganda
Coffee Development Authority reports note that only four per cent of
farmers in the country have more than five hectares of agriculture land.
The
land size for each of the 1.7 million households — mostly smallholder
farmers that dominate coffee farming — ranges from 0.5 to 2.5 hectares.
Around
2010, the total acreage under coffee in Uganda was 182,875 hectares,
compared with Vietnam whose total acreage stood at over 540,000
hectares.
But Mr Nkandu said if young people came on
board, even the small acreage could be optimally utilised by applying
best agronomy practices using fertiliser, reducing coffee tree spacing,
intercropping and renovating the current plantations.
This, he said, would lead to a further yield of about two million bags of coffee annually.
“We
have not done enough to involve the youth; we need to fully empower
them. As they come in, they should learn how the entire coffee value
chain works since they need relevant skills to take coffee production to
another level,” he said.
Most farmers in Uganda are
currently spacing their coffee at 10 by 10 feet, which translates into
less yield per acre of about 4,500kgs of coffee per annum, compared with
Brazil, the world’s largest producer and exporter, whose policy
recommends 1,200 coffee trees per acre, giving a yield of 7,200kgs.
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