Kibinge coffee farmer’s cooperative society goes organic

“It is something that we have been working on since 2018 following a decision at the Annual General Meeting that we should produce organically grown Robust Coffee,” he said.

“We are responding to a demand made by the buyers of our coffee overseas. They prefer organically grown coffee and it is what we want to sell to them.”  Last year the society exported 734 tonnes of coffee, according to Hajj Sowedi Sserwadda, chairman of the society. 

Why organic farming 
The decision to go organic was however was also driven by other factors as Ssekaddu went on to reveal.

The farmers are concerned about the ever rising prices of artificial fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides. 

“We have to minimize production costs of coffee and our farmers have resorted to low cost inputs. We have been carrying out training sessions since 2018 in all the twelve zones of coffee farmers in Kibinge Sub-county educating them about the danger of mindless usage of agricultural chemicals and synthetic fertilisers,” says Ssekaddu.

He said pesticides are not selective and they even kill useful organisms that are responsible for soil aeration and transportation of soil nutrients to the inner parts of the plants’ root areas.  

“We no longer encourage our farmers to use herbicides such as glyphosate and fungicides because we believe that they destroy the health of the soil, yet it is the soil on which we depend for crop production.”

Natural manure 
During the zonal trainings the farmers are taught how to make natural manure right on their farms.

They know how to make composite manure out of livestock dung and grass.

They are taught the importance of mulching in soil nourishment.

“We are aware that it is not easy to fight weeds for farmers with a big acreage. We are planning to assist them with motorized grass cutters so that the weeds are just slashed and left to decompose on the ground. It is a good way of obtaining organic manure,” he says.

The farmers are further encouraged to plant cover crops such as mukina which spreads all over the coffee garden and suppresses the emergency of weeds.

The cover crop is known to be nitrogen fixing and is therefore beneficial to the farmer since it improves soil quality resulting in higher coffee yields.

Farmers form SACCO
Kibinge Farmers’ Cooperative Society which has a membership of more than 2000 farmers has a sister micro-finance institution, Kibinge Coffee Farmers Savings and Credit Cooperative Society (Kibinge SACCO).

All the farmers are at the same time members of the SACCO. It is therefore easy for the members to get agricultural loans.

This is the reason that Ssekaddu easily talks about farmers being assisted to get motorised grass cutters to fight weeds, if they don’t have cash to pay for them.

The cooperative society can purchase the machines and give them out to the farmers even when they   have no cash.

Every farmer is paid through the SACCO and when the farmer is paid for his or her coffee during the harvest time the SACCO deducts its due.

“However there is a provision that if the farmer has some other financial difficulties like school fees or hospital bills, such a farmer can pay half of the amount due and pay the balance at the next coffee harvest.”

Farm machinery 
Kibinge Coffee Farmers Cooperative Society also assists farmers to buy trucks of cow dung for use as manure.

Mr Peter Mugabi, a coffee farmer at Kiryassaaka Village, Kibinge Sub-county, is one of the farmers that have benefitted from this arrangement.

“A seven-tonne-truck of cow dung costs Shs800,000. It is often not possible for me to have the money all the times that I need the cow dung. Therefore I have often been assisted by the society to get it and paid quite conveniently after selling my coffee.”

Mugabi today owns a solar coffee drier that was provided to him by the society on credit.

Many other farmers have the facility which enables them to quickly dry their coffee, always dried to between 12 and 14 percent moisture content.

Ssekaddu and his team of assistants have been teaching the farmers how to use cow dung.

They burry basinful of it in the ground between rows of coffee trees and according to both Mugabi and Ssekaddu the coffee trees will keep well-nourished for a minimum of up to two years unlike in the case of synthetic fertilizers that must be applied at the beginning of every rainy season.

“Moreover coffee grown organically has proven to weigh more that the coffee grown using synthetic fertilizers,” Mugabi testified.

Mugabi who also keeps goats keeps goats’ urine in plastic containers and uses it as manure.

He has also been trained together with the other farmers in the village how to make organic pesticides out of a mixture of some herbs including tobacco leaves, oluwoko neem tree leaves, urine, and orange leaves among many others.

Coffee farmers often complain about stinging tiny black insects often referred to in Luganda as busiisi. The pesticide concoction is said to be preventive.

Livestock 
Another step taken by the society to increase organic manure for the farmers is the introduction of livestock keeping skills to coffee farmers as a way of creating an alternative source of income.

The additional economic activity also makes it easier for them to get livestock excreta, which is good organic fertilizer.  

“We are set to provide our farmers with cattle, goats, and poultry to look after” Ssekaddu disclosed. “We have been giving them livestock keeping skills and teaching them how to use livestock manure to enrich the soil.”

He said the goats and Friesian cows will be loaned to the farmers on the understanding that when they give birth the offspring will be passed on to other farmers.

Ssekaddu explained that the society entered a Fair Trade Agreement with its overseas buyers.

Under the arrangement, the every time the coffee is bought, money is immediately paid to the farmers but after some months the buyers pay back an additional small percentage in form of premium (bonus) to the farmers.

Some of that money is used by the society to do good community work like construction of classroom blocks or provision of clean water sources to some needy communities. 

The society’s impressive administrative block in Misanvu Trading Centre was built using that money.

It is also the money that the society uses to provide livestock and coffee drying equipment like tarpaulins to farmers.  

The society also gives free cloned coffee seedlings to interested farmers.

“We want our farmers to grow only the Robusta coffee varieties that will bear large coffee beans which are preferred for export and so they must plant the right seedling known to produce large beans,” said Ssekaddu.  

Advice 
The farmers are further encouraged to plant cover crops such as mukina which spreads all over the coffee garden and suppresses the emergency of weeds.

The cover crop is known to be nitrogen fixing and is therefore beneficial to the farmer since it improves soil quality resulting in higher coffee yields.