Get it right with coffee

The main driving force behind successful Robusta coffee growing is the interest that the farmer has in the crop as a major source of cash.
Coffee is almost as good as cash because it can easily be exchanged for money at any time of the year. The prices may sometimes fluctuate but it is a crop whose market is guaranteed as there are always traders and organisations ready to buy good quality coffee.

Management practices 
With good management practices, favourable rainfall, and good prices, a Robusta coffee farmer may well earn as much as between Shs20m and Shs25m from a plantation of five acres annually. 
Since it is a seasonally harvested crop the money comes in a lumpsum and it is an amount for the farmer to look forward to for other development and investment plans. 
Coffee, which is perhaps Uganda’s most important foreign exchange earning crop is strongly linked to poverty alleviation and the country’s future economic development will largely depend on coffee production.

Anyone who wants to start growing Robusta coffee and lives in the traditional coffee growing areas could begin with regularly visiting a friendly and successful farmer to get acclimatised with some of the best practices applied such as where to get planting materials, which inputs to purchase, and where they are sold at reasonable prices.

Requirements 
It is important to bear in mind that crops such as coffee are best grown in areas that are geographically suitable --- well distributed rainfall for at least nine months of the year, unless the farm is going to be located near a permanent source of water like a river and the farmer has the capacity to carry out irrigation.  Most parts of Buganda, Ankole, and some areas of Busoga are suitable for growing Robusta coffee. Some districts in northern Uganda have in the recent years been identified as suitable for growing the crop, according to the Uganda National Coffee Strategy 2040, and efforts are underway to sensitise and support interested farmers to take up Robusta coffee growing.

Land preparation 
Land preparation should be done well in advance, especially if it involves removal of some unnecessary trees and tree stumps from the garden. All perennial weeds must be destroyed either by digging using a hand hoe or by application of herbicides. Land preparation in sloppy areas should also include soil conservation measures such as water trapping gullies, contour terraces, bands, and grass strips. 
The farmer should then dig holes about two feet deep and two feet in diameter in the spacing of about 10 by 10 feet. 
We should expect about 500 coffee trees to be planted in an acre. However, in the recent years some successful farmers, particularly members of National Union of Coffee Agribusiness and Farm Enterprises (NUCAFE), have chosen to copy the Brazilian spacing of 3 by 10 feet ending up with about 1,300 coffee trees in an acre and they are realising quite encouraging returns.

The holes should then be filled up with top soil up to about six inches below the general ground level and mix it with a little organic manure ---- such as one spade of well decomposed livestock droppings, about a month before planting. The idea behind not completely filling up the holes with soil is that the remaining space will serve as a rainwater trap for the young coffee tree after it has been planted.

Fertiliser 
Farmers who cannot easily get organic manure may mix the soil with some 100 cc of synthetic fertilisers such as DAP, NPK, or CAN after a conversation with the area agricultural services extension officer. Usually the synthetic fertilisers are applied a few days before planting or even during the process of planting. 
It is always best to plant coffee at the beginning of the rainy season unless there is a provision for irrigation. Cloned Robusta coffee seedlings obtained from research institutes and nurseries recommended by Uganda Coffee Development Authority (UCDA) are the best planting material to go for. 

Where to buy seedlings 
Some prominent farmers, too, make good cloned Robusta coffee plantlets usually with guidance from agricultural services extension officers. Cloned Robusta coffee seedlings from such nurseries are bred to be fast growing, high yielding, and resistant to the dreaded coffee wilt disease. 
Robusta coffee planting materials supplied free of charge by politicians have often proven to be of questionable quality and should be received with caution.

Agronomy after transplanting  
The newly planted coffee plantlets should be protected from direct sunlight by setting up simple shades using palm leaves or small tree branches. 
It is important to fight weeds growing in the garden all the time. For farmers with small gardens mulching or weeding using the hoe can be effective. For people with five or more acres herbicide usage is quite preventive as long as the manufacturer’s guidelines are well followed.
The farmer can plant such crops as beans, groundnuts or peas between the coffee rows for food and income.  After a year or so the young tree should be bent at about 50 degrees to stimulate production of branches. 
A coffee tree should have three or four branches to achieve high yields. It may take as long as two or three years to begin harvesting coffee but maximum yields will be enjoyed by the farmer every year from four years onwards. 

New suckers 
New suckers keep developing on the branches and the farmer has to keep trimming off most of them and sparing those that are likely to grow into productive branches later.
Periodically some branches have to be trimmed off when they are unable to produce coffee cherries. It is advisable to apply fertilisers in recommended amounts every beginning of the rain season to achieve maximum yields. 
Organic manure such as cow dung may be applied by burying about two 20-litre-basins of the manure one foot in the ground between the trees every two years.

During harvest time only red ripe coffee berries must be picked. Every farmer must have a clean coffee drying yard. The yard should be concrete or some arrangements should be made to have tarpaulins in place specifically for drying coffee. 
It should be dried up to 13 per cent moisture content (about nine days of bright sunlight). To earn more from the crop the farmer should take the coffee for hulling and sell FAQ (kase).

Weeding 
For successful management of weeds, integrated strategies are more useful and safe. While in some production systems, herbicides may provide the main means of control; these alone are unlikely to be successful unless combined with slashing and hand weeding around coffee trees good land preparation etc. No one weed control method is likely to control all weeds, and in the long term this can lead to a build-up of certain species.