It is coffee time in Uganda. Just Know your Coffee Cup (JKCC) has embarked on a country wide drive to empower Coffee farmers on how to stay in the coffee business. This drive is aimed at encouraging farmers to grow more coffee and replacing the old coffee trees with the new ones.
Julius Kalulu, the Chief Executive Officer said that this drive will help eliminate the exploitative middlemen in the coffee business making it easy for farmer to directly face the real buyers.
“…our target is for farming community to have youths and women involvement in this business, free from all forms of exploitation so as to access the righty market and have value for their produce” said Kalulu.
He noted that during this drive, JKCC will provide farmers with seedlings as a way of boosting the coffee growing culture amongst youths and women.
JKCC has already established partnerships with different farmer groups in areas of Central Uganda, Kigezi and Eastern Uganda. Kalulu noted that JKCC is currently working with over 3500 farmers who are members in different affiliated associations dealing in Coffee, Maize, Vanilla, and other Cereals.
JKCC boasts of a wealth of experience in Agri-business which makes them very competitive service providers and partners in the Agri-business sector.
This campaign comes at a time Uganda has relaunched an ambitious campaign to become the world’s third-largest exporter of coffee by 2025.
After shipping nearly 6 million 60-kilo bags in 2020, Africa’s largest coffee exporter says it can be done.
A new law which orders the registration of farmers and the enforcement of standards, plus the replacement of old trees with new ones are part of the measures to achieve the target.
In the current coffee year, the country expects to export 6.5 million bags out of a total harvest of 8 million.
After seeing millions of its Robusta coffee trees get decimated by a viral disease in the 1990s, Uganda’s scientists began breeding new, disease-resistant varieties.
Coffee is Uganda’s main cash crop and is the second-highest foreign exchange earner for the country.
Brazil is currently the world’s leading exporter of coffee, having shipped 40.2 million bags in 2020. Vietnam ranks second with 26.4 million bags.