January 21 - 2022

Coffee Geography Magazine

Hanns R. Neumann Stiftung (HRNS) has successfully concluded the Uganda Coffee Agronomy Training (UCAT) project. The four-year program came to an end in October 2021 and reached over 22,000 smallholder families across four districts in Western Uganda (Kakumiro, Kyenjojo, Kibaale and Kagadi) with knowledge on improved coffee management. The region was selected because many of its coffee farmers had previously abandoned the cash crop to focus on seasonal crops like maize, beans, and bananas which bring quicker returns.

UCAT was launched in August 2018 by Jacobs DouweEgberts, KeurigDr Pepper, and Enveritas with the aim of improving the livelihoods of 50,000 farmers in Western Uganda. The partners endeavored to help farmers increase their yields by at least 50% through comprehensive agronomy training implemented by HRNS and TechnoServe.

More than 70% of Uganda's working population is employed in agriculture, making the sector extremely important for the nation's economy. Within agriculture, coffee plays a major role as it is the main cash crop and source of income for over 1.7 million producing households and the main contributor (approx. 22%) to export earnings for the government.

However, most coffee producers, being smallholders, face several key challenges which severely limit their agricultural development potential. Among these the most impactful is the lack of proper extension - which results in poor adoption of Good Agricultural Practices (GAPs), leading to low yields, and consequently, low incomes. Further to this, over the last decade the effects of climate change have become increasingly damaging for coffee production with farmers lacking adaptation skills. This, coupled with poor coffee prices led many farmers to give up on growing coffee for income.