By Prossy Nandudu
Coffee farmers attending the G-25 Coffee Summit have been asked to embrace stumping of old coffee trees to allow the plant to rejuvenate and produce quality beans.
Stumping is a process of cutting older and non-productive coffee trees in a slanting angle (45%) to allow new shoots to sprout.
The advantage of the initiative is that it saves farmers the cost of buying new seedlings and allows the farmer to maintain the preferred variety.
The pruned trees also allow for proper harvesting where the trees tend to be shorter than unstamped ones.
The call was made by Dr Adugna Debele, the managing director of the Ethiopian Coffee and Tea Authority, while presenting a paper on how to increase production and productivity in the African coffee region at Speke Resort Munyonyo.
He explained that Ethiopia, which grows Arabica coffee, clears 100,000 hectares of older coffee trees every year, adding that coffee that was stumped and rejuvenated in the last three years has been harvested with farmers already earning from it.
While farmers’ incomes increased from the stumped coffee trees, general production of coffee in Ethiopia also increased from 700,000 metric tonnes to 900,000 tonnes per hectare, Debele explained.
In addition to stumping, Debele said, they are working with coffee researchers to look out for high yielding, drought tolerant and good quality varieties which are resistant to pests and disease, to replace older and non-productive coffee trees.
The new varieties will come from the more than 10,000 coffee species that have been identified to select the best ones with good characteristics.
“The interventions we have taken so far have improved the yields, genetic richness and volume of coffee being exported to the international market and quality. The commercial type of coffee we have is about 70% due to interventions. Commercial or low grade coffee is being replaced with specialty coffee,” he said.
To ensure that farmers access the right market, he said, Ethiopia has reviewed some of its policies to allow them to sell directly to buyers only branded coffee.
He, however, said the marketing system is highly monitored for traceability, but also to guard against smuggling of Ethiopian coffee so that it is not used as a spice in coffee sourced from other parts of World.
Testimony from Uganda
John Byamugisha, from Nyamiko village, Bushenyi district, is one of the farmers who is already reaping from stumping his coffee trees.
“I grew up knowing that a coffee tree is left to fruit until it becomes non-productive. That is why in one of my gardens, I still have old coffee trees that are now taller and bear tiny coffee beans,” he said.
Byamugisha explained that he learnt of stumping from a field extension officer attached to Uganda Coffee Development Authority (UCDA) through a demonstration garden on three quarters of his piece of land in 2016. Because he was keen on understanding how the technology works, he offered part of his land to act as a demonstration.
“When my garden was stumped for the first time, I harvested 10 bags of Kiboko, which I sold at sh4500 a kilo. In the second phase, I harvested 20 bags, he added.
Tips for stumping
Experts from the UCDA warned that for a farmer to go into stumping, they should work with an extension worker to guide on how to cut the trees to prevent the spread of diseases.
Also, the trees should be stumped at eight years and more, a period where they are said to be less productive. Cutting the coffee gardens should be done in a phased manner.
If one has four acres, they should stump one acre per season for one to continue earning from the existing trees, explained Edward Lutakome Sentamu, a principal coffee development officer at UCDA.
