When It Rains, The Coffee Pours!

For those of us who are British or who live in the UK, the constant bad weather and abundance of rain are annoying to say the least, but part of our everyday lives!  Of course, rain has it benefits – producing water to drink for all living things, filling streams and putting moisture in the air, to name a few.  But did you know that severe increases in rain can help produce bumper crops of coffee beans too?

This year in Uganda, the unusual rainy weather will significantly increase their coffee output.  For the past two months, the state owned Uganda Coffee Development Authority has reported that eastern Uganda has been experiencing heavy rainfall in their coffee-growing districts.  As a result of this, exports of coffee from Uganda could rise as much as 3% this year as crop outputs increase, thanks to more rain in regions where the bean is grown.  

Coffee farmers in eastern and central Uganda who account for about 55% of the country’s annual production of beans are expected to harvest the commodity later this year.  Uganda, the biggest exporter of coffee in Africa, predominately cultivates the Robusta variety of coffee which could see exports rise to 3.6 million 60kg bags for the season.

The National Union of Coffee Agribusinesses and Farm Enterprises, NUCAFE, predicts farmers will benefit from good prices for the commodity.  There are some concerns about how crops may have been affected by a prolonged dry spell between January and March, but it should not affect overall output and there should be a strong harvest.

In recent years, the Ugandan government has been encouraging the industry to grow more coffee to help boost export earnings.  In 1994, the Agriculture Ministry launched a 20-year campaign to plant 200 million trees by 2015 and to date, they have apparently planted 150 million trees, which should increase production from 3.5 million to 4.5 million bags annually.

This top export industry is now worth about $450m (£277m) for Uganda, with 1.5 million households involved in coffee growing.  Hopefully, it will continue as scientists are engineering a new drought-resistant coffee plant that will help farmers in Uganda boost their annual crop output, as the lengthy dry spells attributed to climate change are having disastrous effects on farmers’ livelihoods, and so researchers are developing drought-tolerant crops to help them cope.

Source: BBC Business News 15 September 2014

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