Tea farmers abandon crop as prices fall

In Isunga village, on the edge of Kibale National Park in western Uganda, brothers Nicholas Isingoma and Larry Mayombo stop a tricycle at two overgrown tea farms.

At 1,505 metres above sea level, Isunga in Kabarole District is perfect for tea growing, yet two farms separated by Fort Portal-Kamwenge Road have been abandoned.

The tea bushes, which used to be kept at three to five feet through regular pruning to ease plucking and encourage bud growth, have grown almost seven feet.

The brothers’ farms are part of hundreds of acres of tea estates in Uganda abandoned due to a sharp fall in prices of the green leaf.

When farm-gate prices fell from Shs700 to Shs100 in the first six months of 2024, many farmers abandoned their crop.

Isingoma’s family could no longer afford to pay for pesticides, pickers and people to weed and prune the tea.

Plucking costs Shs130 per kilogramme,crops and transport (Shs170 a kilogramme). So, it made no sense for Isingoma to continue tending the bushes.

“I have grown up in a tea estate,” he says, narrating fond memories of well-maintained farms when the prices were right.

The tea estate had been an attraction for visitors in the area.

The Chimpanzee Forest Lodge on the edge of the park, the former residence of their great-grandfather, remains a tourist facility, partly due to the tea plantation. In 2003, the family innovated and turned their grandfathers' residence into a guest house.

Their tea plantation, which was planted in 1966, was once employing 15 to 20 pickers, but now the family is struggling.

The same struggles are playing out in Sheema District, southwestern Uganda, home to another group of disgruntled tea farmers.

At Buzaare Tea Estate, harvesting machines have replaced human workers to reduce labour costs, but those still employed as tea pickers use shears for harvesting “buds and the two young leaves”, which, however, compromises the quality.

Apollo Buzaare Turyamusiima, chairman of Uganda Tea Outgrowers Association, is concerned about the low quality of green leaf, which he blames on gaping regulatory gaps.

To the farmers, the fond memories are gone: The once flourishing crop that fed, educated and paid their bills for more than six decades is no more.

Government subsidy?

During a visit to southwestern Uganda last year, President Museveni warned farmers against growing tea due to challenges of low returns for small-scale farming, telling them that tea was only profitable on a large scale..

The low returns in the tea sector, which have persisted for more than a year, have prompted government to rethink bailing out struggling producers, especially smallholder farmers who have been pushing for subsidised fertiliser costs of more than 50 percent.

The retail price of a 50 kilogramme bag of nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium fertiliser is Shs160,000. A 50 percent subsidy would reduce the cost to Shs80,000.

Farmers are betting on fertiliser application to increase productivity from 1,633 kilogramme per hectare annually to 2,500 kilogramme, against a potential of above 3,000 kilogramme.

However, the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Agriculture, Maj-Gen David Kasura-Kyomukama, has more questions than answers.

“How do we bail them out? Because you bail them out when you have the money. How do you give them subsidies when you don’t have money?” he asks, wondering: “Why [government] would subsidise a crop which is cheap.”

Tea farmers in the Kigezi sub-region also face similar problems, for which ICT minister Chris Baryomunsi has asked them to remain patient.

“I urge farmers not to uproot their tea because of the falling prices. The plight of tea farmers has been discussed in Cabinet,” he said last year in November.

Important crop 

Tea is Uganda’s third most important agricultural export after coffee and fish. It earns Uganda an average of $76m annually. 

More than 68 percent of Uganda’s tea acreage is owned by outgrowers. The country has 32 tea processing factories, five of which are owned by shareholder farmers.

The tea sector employs around 80,000 farming households and supports 150,000 skilled and unskilled workers, with about a million people relying on tea cultivation for their livelihoods.

[email protected]