A farmer tending to coffee berries. Tanzania plans to come up with
better policies to improve the coffee sector. FILE PHOTO | NMG
Coffee farmers and co-operatives in Tanzania will, starting this
month, sell their produce only through the annual coffee auctions to
benefit from the growing global coffee market and to stop the rampant
coffee smuggling to neighbouring countries by individual growers.
The
annual auction is scheduled to take place in Moshi this month under the
supervision of the Tanzania Coffee Board, the official auctioneer and
growers are required to sell their produce only through farmers
co-operatives. The selling of coffee directly from farms has been
banned.
The announcement was made by the Agriculture
Minister Charles Tizeba when he met Uganda’s Minister of State for
Co-operative Unions Frederick Ngobi Gume this week in Kagera. They
resolved to monitor cross-border trade and smash the coffee smuggling
rings.
Mr Tizeba said that the annual coffee auctions
are properly planned to ensure that farmers are paid at market price for
their crop.
Middlemen in Tanzania have been blamed for
the low prices and late payments, forcing farmers to seek alternative
markets. Apart from Uganda, farmers in the Kilimanjaro and Arusha
regions are said to smuggle their coffee to Kenya.
Tanzania
is the fourth coffee-producing country in Africa — after Ethiopia, Cote
d'Ivoire and Uganda — with an annual crop ranging from 46,000 tonnes to
60,000 tonnes.
The Kagera Region alone produces about
12,131 tonnes of coffee annually, a third of which is reported to be
illegally sold in Uganda due to unpredictable prices in Tanzania.
On average, Tanzanian coffee fetches Ush2,000 ($0.5) per kilo, against Tsh1,460 ($0.6) on
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