By Vision Reporter
Northern Uganda suffers from severe deforestation, making farmers vulnerable to weather changes.
In the Acholi subregion, farmers are realizing the benefits of growing coffee as one of the main cash crops amidst these climate change challenges.
Despite embracing coffee farming, they are still facing the challenge of limited access to machinery like hully and roaster to add value to their coffee which has forced them to sell coffee immediately after it has dried up.
Innocent Piloya, 30, is working hard to ensure coffee farmers in Acholi and Lango subregions produce high-quality coffee and add value to it to alleviate poverty in the region.
What sparked her interest in coffee?
Having graduated with a Bachelor’s in Agribusiness from Makerere University in 2019, she decided to take a week practical course on coffee roasting and packaging from Makerere University Research Institute the same year.
What sparked her interest was the fact that farmers from Northern Uganda produce low-value annual crops leaving them in poverty and she wanted to change the narrative.
Although she was already working with different farmers from Acholi subregion, after her graduation, she started to promote coffee growing.
She says she wanted to do it in a better way that would bring more money to farmers.
“I saw an opportunity in coffee as a crop for both poverty alleviation and environmental conservation,” says Piloya.
In December 2022, she registered her company called Ribbo Coffee and today, she employs eight youths between 21-35 years who add value to coffee.
In September 2024, her company managed to acquire a hulling machine to support farmers in adding value to the crop.
Centre of learning
In 2020, they started utilizing the 12 acres of land located at Okol A Village, Bobi sub-county in Omoro District which they had acquired to act as a Community Learning Centre for Agroecology in Northern Uganda and to provide solutions to all farmers.
Out of the 12 acres, 7 acres have been gazetted for forest, 4 acres for coffee growing while the rest is gazetted for growing carrots, rosemary, Neem, and Aloe vera, most of which are used to make organic pesticides.
The farm is managed by Reagan Okumu, 26, a professional Agriculturist.
He told New Vision that they have adopted many strategies to preserve the environment and to ensure good quality coffee even during dry spells.
“We are doing both mulching and drip irrigation to ensure our coffee withstands any weather conditions,” he explains.
On preserving the environment, Okumu said, “We are planting more trees like neem, fruits like avocados, mangoes, oranges. We are avoiding bush burning as well as adopting the use of organic pesticides by mixing ingredients like rosemary, aloe vera, and meem.”
Okumu advises start-up farmers to plant coffee alongside legume crops like beans, soya, and bananas to add more nitrogen to coffee.
Value addiction
The company has machinery for hulling, roasting and grinding coffee.
They buy a kilogram of dry coffee from farmers at shillings 5,000 and hull it.
She also buys a kilogram of clean Robusta from West Acholi and Lango at shillings 15,000 and Arabica from Kapchorwa and Zombo at shillings 22,000 both ready for roasting.
A kilogram of both roasted and grinded coffee goes for shillings55,000.
Challenges
Piloya says that accessing financial support from financial institutions remains a mystery which affects her business.
She adds that “acquiring a certificate from Uganda National Bureaus of Standards (UNBS) for our product (processed coffee) is yet another challenge we are facing which limits us from accessing some markets like selling to retailers.”
According to her, the cost of facilitating agronomists to follow up on their farmers’ farms is still high yet they are also facing human resources.