Regional body seeks to replicate Uganda coffee farmers'

By David Ssempijja

Executive members of the East African Farmers’ Federation (EAFF) have expressed interest in replicating the Uganda originated Farmer Ownership Model (FOM) that has supported increased roles of smallholder coffee farmers along the crop value chain systems.

Applied with in the membership of the National Union of Coffee Agribusiness and Farm Enterprises (NUCAFE), the FOM serves as an architecture directed at changing the role of the middlemen in the coffee value chain and increasing the monetary value that farmers retain, thus salvaging them from the plight of losses.

Against that background, the Nairobi- based EAFFA is considering replicating and promoting the Model among other East African Community countries so that farmers elsewhere can also tap into the economic benefits enjoyed by a cross-section of Uganda coffee farmers.

EAFF program officer Policy and Advocacy Mainza Mugoya noted that since the Model emphasises reduced roles of middlemen along the value chain, efforts should also be geared towards promoting it in the production systems of many other crops across the region.

“FOM is such a wonderful tool in boosting farmers’ income levels; we are going to find out ways of integrating it within many other farming systems elsewhere so that its benefits transcend the confines of Uganda and coffee farming,” he said during a courtesy call to NUCAFE last week.

The NUCAFE executive director and the FOM intellectual property owner Joseph Nkandu explained that the model even has won global awards and its success has also been occasioned by the promotion on collective entrepreneurship through which farmers are grouped, share knowledge at the farm level and pool their quality controlled produces to enjoy the benefits of large economies of scale at the local and export markets.

NUCAFE’s membership has reached 160 coffee farmer associations and cooperatives comprising over 600,000 farmers.

EAFF president Phillip Kiriro said his body has a task of sensitising the farmers about the EAC integration and its benefits to them so that they explore avenues of exploiting the available and future opportunities like venturing into Tariff-free export markets.

“We are going to get more involved in grouping farmers to enable us reach out to them for knowledge sharing and other services as we move ahead to deal with numerous Non-Tariff barriers in the face of farming businessmen,” he said.