A man spreads coffee beans in the sun recently. PHOTO/ FILE
Uganda, whose top foreign exchange earner—coffee—has faced challenges meeting European Union (EU) anti-deforestation regulations, has caught a break. Two weeks ago, the EU provisionally decided to push back its major anti-deforestation law until the end of next year (2025), offering supply chains for products like coffee and beef extra time to adapt.
This compromise was reached after a strong push from large agricultural giants like Brazil and Indonesia, as well as EU members like Austria and Finland. The Opposition against what’s dubbed Europe’s green agenda also elicited blowback from big firms from all sides—chocolate makers, rubber companies and cocoa exporters. They argued that complying with the rule, which requires tracing products like coffee and beef back to their deforestation-free origins, needed more time and resources. The breakthrough came after lawmakers dropped their extra demands, allowing the delay to sail through.
Everything else, however, stays intact, including the EU’s plan to categorise countries by deforestation risk by mid-2025. Initially, the EU’s 27 member states welcomed the proposal to delay. Some centre-right lawmakers tried to carve out exemptions for countries with low deforestation, but their efforts didn’t stick. Ultimately, it boiled down to two options: accept a year-long delay or let the rules start immediately.
Parliament chose the former. This reprieve gives businesses and global supply chains time to adjust to the EU’s complex requirements. Uganda is among the countries eager to embrace the EU’s new regulation, albeit with reservations. The sweeping rule requires farmers to prove their produce wasn’t grown on deforested land—a mandate that risks sidelining entire value chains, with smallholder farmers, the backbone of Uganda’s agricultural output, facing the greatest challenges.
Still a race against time
Among the products caught in this regulatory net is Uganda’s prized coffee, renowned for its distinct quality. Other commodities are cocoa, cattle, palm oil, soy, rubber, and wood. More than 60 percent of this coffee heads to the lucrative EU market, making compliance a necessity and a matter of survival. The EU frames these standards as part of its ambitious European Green Deal, a strategy to promote sustainable business practices within its borders. The mandatory rules aim to ensure companies operate responsibly, respecting human rights and the environment. However, for developing countries like Uganda, meeting these requirements is anything but straightforward. The ripple effects are significant, threatening to reshape how business is done while posing steep compliance hurdles. This requirement means farmers must provide precise geographical coordinates of their gardens to prove their crops weren’t cultivated on deforested land—dating back to December 31, 2020. The EU uses a global forest map to verify these claims, cross-referencing farm coordinates with historical deforestation data.
“To comply, Uganda has developed a National Action Plan, with help from private firms, government entities, and development financiers so that the country registers more than two million households that grow coffee,” Mr Tony Mugoya, the managing director of Uganda Coffee Farmers, said. “
In terms of compliance, I would say we’re at 20 percent, currently. We now have around a million farmers compliant, but the rest haven’t reached that level yet. The good thing is the regulation was extended for a year,” he explained, adding: “I think one reason for the extension was the need for a robust infrastructure to check compliance and traceability for all those commodities entering the EU market.”
The initiative remains a race against time as Uganda works to meet the EU’s exacting standards, with the livelihoods of smallholder farmers and the nation’s vital export earnings hanging in the balance.
Stumbling blocks
One of the main hurdles Uganda faces in meeting this compliance drive is a lack of information. Many farmers are reluctant to have their farms mapped due to limited awareness of the regulation. However, the Uganda Coffee Development Authority (UCDA) is making strides to bridge this knowledge gap. “There’s also a significant challenge with financing,” Mr Mugoya noted.
“The funding available can only support half of the coffee farmers. It’s simply not enough for everyone. Beyond that, there’s a pressing need for technology to facilitate traceability. While many major players in the coffee value chain have access to such technology, it is missing at the farm level and needs to be addressed,” he said.
The UCDA itself is grappling with insufficient funding for traceability measures, as Saturday Monitor has learned. Despite presenting its budget to key stakeholders, including Parliament, the National Planning Authority, the Finance minister, and the House Agriculture Committee, the Authority has not received adequate financial support, its executives have previously stated on different media. While the UCDA requested Shs35.5 billion to bolster mapping and traceability efforts, only Shs13.9 billion was allocated.
Uganda could have sidestepped some of these challenges if the EU had accepted its initial proposed short-term solution of reassuring the EU that it would map the entire country, identifying “red zones” where coffee is grown on deforested land, and blocking such coffee from entering the European market. But EU authorities turned down this approach, holding fast to their demand for complete traceability.
National coffee register
Now, Uganda must trace the origin of its coffee and comply with EU regulations before any beans leave its borders for Europe in early 2026. To meet these stringent standards, two crucial steps are necessary. First, Uganda must create a national coffee register to map every farmer’s plot accurately. For farms sitting on ore than 10 acres, this involves a comprehensive polygon map of the entire property. For smaller plots, under 10 acres, even a GPS location for individual trees must be provided.
This aligns with the EU’s rigorous traceability requirements for coffee exports. While many multinational companies have already invested in traceability systems to protect their supply chains, local businesses, especially smallholders, face a more daunting challenge without such resources. As such, UCDA’s top priority is to establish a robust traceability system and ensure all farmers’ plots are mapped. But with limited resources, this ambitious goal remains difficult to achieve without additional funding. Despite the urgency, there have been no discussions in Parliament to pass a supplementary budget to support this vital cause. The government acknowledges that while support from the private sector and funding partners is increasing, it remains insufficient to bridge the current financing gap.
