Strategies farmers can adopt to sustain coffee production
Saturday May 22 2021
Jacqueline Tukdel inspects her young coffee crop at Peya Village, Ongaco Sub-county, Omoro District. Photos | Michael J Ssali
Summary
Farmers are now paying more attention to good agronomic practices since they have formed groups in which members have set rules directed at producing a clean and marketable crop.
Advertisement
Last year Uganda registered a remarkable increase in coffee exports. Our June 2020 coffee export performance figures from the Uganda Coffee Development Authority (UCDA) in the financial year 2019/2020 indicated that we set an all-time new record of 5.10 million 60-kilogramme bags.
Export earnings also remarkably went up, bringing in $496m (Shs1.79 trillion). In the previous year, we exported 4.2 million 60 – kilogrammes bags, worth $415.1m. For a very long time, Uganda’s annual coffee production had stagnated at around 3 million 60-kg bags.
Daily Monitor
Saturday April 17 2021
Summary
Joseph Kasekende, who is a trained agriculturist and an extension service worker, went into the coffee nursery operation business in 1995 after undergoing a course in Robusta coffee cloning at Ntaawo Agricultural Research Institute in Mukono District.
Advertisement
For Joseph Kasekende of Bunyonyi Village, Miti Parish, Kalisizo Rural Sub-county, Kyotera District, coffee farming is a four-fold enterprise. His first enterprise is conventional coffee farming which involves good coffee plantation sustenance practices, harvesting, drying and selling.
His second enterprise is the coffee nursery where he produces cloned Robusta coffee plantlets for sale to fellow farmers.
His third enterprise is coffee tourism which involves hosting visitors, some of whom come from overseas to see how coffee is grown. His fourth enterprise, which is still in its infancy, involves making and packaging coffee powder that can be sold to the many visitors