Good harvest practices will improve prices

In most parts of Uganda the coffee harvesting season is just beginning and farmers out of the desire to maximise profits are worried about the rather low farm gate prices of the cash crop.
In the period of the Covid-19 country-wide lockdown the FAQ (kase) Robusta coffee price has dropped from around Shs4,100 to Shs3,700.
In the recent few days there has been a slight improvement but it is not certain if the prices will continue rising to meet farmers’ expectations.

How to get good prices
Edward Lutaakome Ssentamu, Uganda Coffee Development Authority (UCDA) central region manager, says the farmers ought to understand that good farm gate prices for coffee are directly connected to the way they conduct work on their farms.

“Good prices are paid for good quality coffee,” he told Seeds of Gold in an interview. “Good quality is achieved by farmers picking only red ripe coffee. And I am saying: red, not purple. When the red cherries are not picked on time and they turn purple they begin fermenting which is not good for coffee cup taste. Then it is also very important for all farmers to have clean coffee harvesting equipment such as clean baskets, bags, and tarpaulin or mats.

Unclean equipment will introduce bad smells into the coffee crop. Coffee must be spread on clean cemented floor or tarpaulin and domestic animals must be prevented from walking over the coffee that is spread out to dry under the sun.”

Ssentamu went ahead to explain, “There are particular coffee quality aspects that buyers at the international market look out for and which as producers we have to fulfil in order for our product to attract high prices. That is why I say that farmers play a very important role in improving coffee prices and making coffee farming more profitable.”

Storage
As soon as Robusta coffee is harvested it should be spread out under the sun for drying and if it is Arabica coffee it should be taken for wet milling. Keeping harvested red coffee indoors for days causes mould which damages its quality.

“The coffee ought to be dried up to moisture level of 13 per cent. And if the farmer chooses to store it for some time before disposing of it he should pack it in bags and place them on wooden pallets to avoid picking moisture from the floor,” says Ssentamu.

The bags should be placed a good distance from the walls. The roof must be leak proof and the room must be well ventilated. When the coffee is to be transported from the farm to the market the bags must be protected from dust and rain and the farmer should use trucks that have tarpaulin covers.

He further said that coffee must never be stored together with crops such as maize and beans in the same room because they might transmit mould to the coffee and damage its quality.
Quality
Sowedi Sserwadda, chairman of Kibinge Coffee Farmers Cooperative Society in Masaka, made nearly similar recommendations about best coffee harvesting practices.

“Good coffee quality production begins with farmers planting the best quality plantlets,” he told Seeds of Gold. “Good quality coffee includes coming up with large coffee beans such as screen 17 and screen 18 which is only achievable if the farmer uses the right planting material obtained from nurseries licensed by UCDA.

The coffee trees must be well taken care of from planting to maturity by the farmer doing the weeding, applying the needed inputs, and carrying out regular inspection.

During harvesting the farmer should not trip but rather pick the coffee cherries carefully, removing only the red, ripe, ones.
Picking green coffee cherries causes loss for the farmer because they weigh much less after drying than the red ones and apart from that they kill the cup taste. Since we are into group marketing we ensure that no farmers dry their coffee on the bare ground.

That practice causes foreign objects such as stones and animal droppings to get mixed into the coffee which degrades quality. We prefer that the farmers spread out the coffee on tarpaulin to dry under the sun as soon as they harvest it.”

Asked how farmers can go about this since harvesting is taking place during the rainy season, Sowedi said, “That is why we are insisting on the use of tarpaulin because upon noticing that it is about to rain the farmer can fold up the tarpaulin and cover up the coffee, thus protecting it from the rain.

When it stops raining he just uncovers the coffee and spreads it out again. In fact even if it rained on the coffee right on the tarpaulin the damage is not as bad as what would be caused by keeping harvested red coffee beans indoors for days waiting for sunshine.”

In the Masaka region and perhaps a few other regions thieves often visit farms at night and harvest unripe coffee and eventually get buyers of the coffee. This evil practice has led some farmers to harvest unripe coffee from their own gardens before the thieves take it. When asked to comment about this problem, Sserwadda, who is also the Chairman of Kibinge Sub-county, said, “Farmers must exercise vigilance in their groups to fight this. What we do here when we see anyone spreading out unripe coffee in the yard we ask him where he got that coffee from.

If he has a garden we ask him to show us where he picked the coffee in his garden. We then blame him for picking unripe coffee before reporting him to the authorities. If he has no coffee garden it is clear that he either stole it himself or he bought it from a thief. It becomes a police case.”