There are approximately 80,000 Robusta coffee-farming families in North-Western Tanzania.    30,000 live in 141 communities in the districts of Bukoba Town, Bukoba Rural, Missenyi, Muleba, Biharamulo, and Ngara, and they are members of the Kagera Cooperative Union.  50,000 of them live in 150 communities in the districts of Karagwe and Kyerwa and are members of the Karagwe District Cooperative Union.

Each cooperative union has a project to help 30 communities become organic coffee producers.   The two unions have no assistance for their other communities, and SID will help them increase their productivity, price, and income from Robusta coffee.

Farmers of both cooperative unions have similar opportunities for increasing their income.  They need to prune their coffee trees, stump older trees, and fertilize the trees with manure to increase their productivity.  The recommended number of trees is 450 per acre, but most farmers have only 50 to 250 trees per acre.  Also, most farmers dry their cherries but do not take the extra step of hulling them and selling the beans.

THE GENERAL POPULATION

The project began in September 2024, with farmers defining 22 practices they needed to adopt to graduate from poverty—8 for increasing productivity, 5 for increasing their price, 5 for conserving land and water, and 4 for making better business decisions.

We started the project by helping farmers fill the gaps in their coffee plots so that they could plant new seedlings in October and November 2024.

We will conduct the baseline for the general population’s knowledge and adoption of the practice they need to adopt in December 2024.