The Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA) shut down its activities in December 2020 at the end of its mandate. The administrative closure of the Centre was completed in November 2021.
Leading image

Value addition through digitalisation for Ugandan coffee farmers

Bags of NUCAFE coffee for export to international markets

A digital farmer profiling initiative, which enables coffee to be traced back to its roots, is paying off for smallholder farmers in Uganda. NUCAFE’s David Muwonge describes how coffee produced under the scheme is fetching far higher prices, revealing the strong potential of geo-referencing as a marketing tool to guarantee authenticity and origin.

The design of a geospatial database is helping Ugandan coffee farmers to provide traceable products, ensuring access to new markets and higher prices. With support from CTA, the National Union of Coffee Agribusinesses and Farm Enterprises (NUCAFE) has generated farmer profiles and maps of coffee farms as part of a targeted marketing strategy. NUCAFE represents 210 coffee farmers and farmers’ organisations - totalling 205,120 farming families - by advocating in their favour, facilitating their access to services and resources and by promoting farmers’ access to local and international markets. Seeing how proof of origin influences market prices for coffee, NUCAFE is investing in technology that will secure product traceability.

Before its collaboration with CTA, NUCAFE set up an Excel database with basic member information, based on manually uploaded questionnaires. Realising the limited capacity of this database, NUCAFE and CTA collaborated to develop a spatial data management system. Between June 2017 and April 2018, farmers were profiled using a tablet-based questionnaire that captures the coffee farm family details, production information and GPS location of the household and farm. With data privacy consent, the data was transferred to the NUCAFE servers, using ONA, and processed using QGIS and ArcGIS geographical information systems software to generate maps of farm locations and individual coffee farms field maps. To obtain higher resolution images of the individual farms, to be used for traceability and delivery of agricultural advisory services, the GPS coordinates are used to produce flight plans for drones.

In the second phase of the project, this improved database will help to generate added value by effectively providing each batch of coffee with a ‘passport’ in the form of a QR-code, which proves its authenticity and origin. This passport includes information about the farmer who grew the beans, the farmer group, geographical farm location, the product itself, date of delivery to the warehouse, and details of the coffee’s subsequent journey along the supply chain.

Traceability pays off

Within six months after its launch, the initiative has already produced promising results. International buyers from Italy and South Korea have offered higher prices for coffee produced by the profiled farmers, paying €3.51 per kg instead of the less than €2.16 generally paid for untraceable coffee of similar quality. The premium increase of 24 % on the basic price is directly related to product traceability, which ensures consumers that coffee farmers truly benefit from their purchase and that coffee beans carry specific geological and geospatial quality markers. For a typical Arabica coffee farm of 0.4 hectares producing an average 600 kg each year, that translates into an additional annual income of €850.-.

“We have benefited from the additional income we get from our coffee being traceable and certified by being able to take our children to school and working on the community health centre,” says Mr Gibezi Yunus a farmer from Bufumbo Organic Cooperative Association.

NUCAFE member Bufumbo Organic Coffee Farmers Association has been quick to use the database to its advantage. It used data about its farmers and their coffee farms from the NUCAFE spatial database, for a critical external audit for organic and UTZ (an international standard for fair, sustainable and transparent production) certification. The association was able to obtain both certificates, and subsequently sold 19.8 metric tonnes (MT) of organic/UTZ certified coffee to an Italian buyer for roasting, and a further 160 MT to other buyers. Following this success, other farmers are motivated to change their practices to obtain certificates and coffee farmers’ associations are expressing interest to use the database for certification. As there are additional compliance costs and a conversion period associated with organic certification, NUCAFE sensitises its members on the requirements and supports them in securing resources from internal and external sources for the process.

At a practical level, the geo-referenced data has enabled extension workers, businesses and hub managers working with the coffee farmers’ associations to improve logistics planning. Having a detailed overview of the territory and location of farmers makes it easier for them to schedule coffee bean collection, effective agricultural advisory support, and supplementary services. Awareness raising on the value of drought insurance, training in climate-smart agriculture, and positioning of strategically located wet processing machines in Mabira Coffee Farmers Association are among the services delivered by NUCAFE.

Upscaling digital profiling

Buoyed by its early success with the digital database, NUCAFE has received more than €1.2 million from the European Union to help establish geographical indications for coffee in six member cooperatives in the Rwenzori region during the next four years (2018 to 2022). Targeting 20,000 coffee farmer households, many located in the remote area of the Rwenzori Mountains, the initiative seeks to obtain organic, fair trade and geographical indicator certification, using GIS-based tools. The ultimate goal is to secure improved livelihoods, job creation and poverty alleviation for coffee farming families.

Growing awareness of the potential benefits of being profiled is starting to attract new members to NUCAFE. Furthermore, the state-run Uganda Coffee Development Authority (UCDA) wants to use the same profiling methodology for all Ugandan coffee farmers to facilitate service provision and distribution of inputs, and to upgrade speciality branding of Ugandan coffee on the international market.

Read More

by , , and

In order to feed 9 billion people by 2050, sustainable agricultural growth in needed, supporting an agricultural sector which produces enough food, which is inclusive and resilient, and which makes optimal use of innovation and digital solutions. Smallholder and family farmers must play a key role in achieving this. A 80% of the world’s food supply is produced by small-scale and family farmers, yet their full production potential is hardly reached.

by

A digital farmer profiling initiative, which enables coffee to be traced back to its roots, is paying off for smallholder farmers in Uganda. NUCAFE’s David Muwonge describes how coffee produced under the scheme is fetching far higher prices, revealing the strong potential of geo-referencing as a marketing tool to guarantee authenticity and origin.

by

Agriculture is back at the top of Africa’s development agenda, enjoying the support of governments and attracting heavy investments from private sectors. Many of smallholder farmers across Africa that are central to the agricultural transformation taking shape on the continent, however, struggle to benefit from these developments due to their dispersed, small-scale and unorganised nature. Aggregation of smallholder farmers’ needs may provide the solution, says Norbert Tuyishime of the Eastern Africa Farmers Federation (EAFF).

by and

Marc Ghislain Bappa Se and Nestor Ngouambe discuss opportunities for farmers’ organisations to harness data-driven agriculture to facilitate market access for smallholder farmers in Cameroon. Taking the PIDMA project as an example, they argue that supporting farmers’ organisations’ capacity to capitalise on data is crucial for farmers to efficiently and effectively tap into the ‘data value chain’ sphere.

by

A spatial data management system to profile tea farmers and map tea plots among members of the Igara Tea Growers Factory (IGTF) in Uganda has led to increased access to financial services for producers, and higher repayment rates for input loans. An immediate impact has been increased productivity and a dramatic fall-off in the practice of side-selling – so much so that other tea companies are now considering adopting the model.

by , , and

Africa is facing an escalating soil fertility crisis and without immediate interventions, the continent continues to lose over €3,5 billion per year worth of nutrients. To increase productivity whilst decreasing soil fertility decline, balanced fertilisation is essential. Farmer cooperatives using soil scanners to provide real-time fertiliser recommendations to farmers may be part of the solution. AgroCares and Agriterra present their findings from a soil sensor services pilot for farmer cooperatives in Kenya. 

by , and

The remote arid and semi-arid Lands of Northern Kenya are dominated by pastoralist livestock production and are constantly threatened by prolonged droughts. Destocking, restocking and moving their herd to grazing areas are a key coping strategy for herders. Yet in times of stress, herders often find themselves selling stock at low prices. The challenge of accessing information serves is a key constraint for pastoralist communities to make informed decisions and manage risks.

by

How can we ensure that drought is no longer an outright disaster to smallholder farmers in Africa, but instead a manageable risk? With low-cost satellite-based index insurance products that monitor climatic conditions in near real-time and automatically trigger a pay-out when conditions are below normal. This helps farmers secure necessary credit for inputs, recover faster from bad seasons and sustainably improve their livelihoods.

Location:

Past issues

ICT Update N. 91

Next-generation ACP agriculture - innovations that work

ICT Update N. 90

Women and Digitalisation in Agriculture

ICT Update N. 89

Data4Ag: New opportunities for organised smallholder farmers

ICT Update N. 88

Unlocking the potential of blockchain for agriculture

View all