By Umaru Kashaka
Agriculture minister Frank Tumwebaze has urged coffee farmers in the country to organise themselves in a better way to be able to deal with the Government and other partners.
“I urged the coffee farmers to organise better under district coffee associations/cooperatives as this will create a better and enabling structure for them to deal with government and other partners,” he posted on his X, formerly Twitter, account on Monday.
Tumwebaze presided over the handover ceremony of coffee processing equipment/motorised pulpers worth shillings two billion in Kampala to 75 coffee farmers/co-operatives from the coffee growing areas to enable them to add value to their products and increase their earnings.
The pulpers that were provided by the Uganda Coffee Development Authority (UCDA) have a processing capacity of one tonne per hour.
“The machines will help on farm primary processing and thus give them (farmers) better farm gate prices,” the minister said.
The farm gate prices, as of the end of September, ranged from shillings 3,800 to 4,200 per kilogramme for robusta dry cherries and shillings 7,800 to 8,000 per kilogramme for fair average quality coffee.
About 1.7 million households in Uganda are engaged in coffee farming and close to five million people are employed in coffee-related activities.
Uganda recently achieved a historic milestone in its coffee exports, generating an impressive $940.3m in revenues for the 2022/2023 coffee year that concluded on September 30, 2023.
This represented a remarkable 7% increase compared to the previous year, attributed to a surge in export volumes.
UCDA data indicates that the country exported 6.14 million 60kg bags of coffee in the last financial year, surpassing the 5.86 million bags exported in the preceding year. The robust performance was particularly notable in the robusta variety.
Italy, Germany, India, Sudan, and Morocco were the primary destinations for Uganda’s coffee exports, with additional shipments to Tunisia, Somalia, Egypt, Libya, and Kenya.
