Zambia plans to raise coffee output to 4,300 tonnes in 2008/09 from 3,500 tonnes the previous season, but the sector still faces many hurdles, a senior industry official said on Tuesday.
Joseph Taguma, the head of the Zambia Coffee Growers Association (ZCGA), said coffee production would rise despite various problems.
“There are still many challenges we are facing which are making the sector grow at a slow pace,” Taguma told Reuters in an interview.
Taguma said coffee production was being constrained by lack of long term financing, transport and higher labour costs and fuel prices, forcing many farmers to stop growing coffee in preference to other export crops.
Zambia grows and exports washed arabicas, including its premier Triple A brand coffee mainly shipped to Japan.
“The number of small scale farmers has shrunk to about 91 from 161 while only 18 commercial farmers grow coffee on a large scale. There are several problems which are forcing farmers to stop growing coffee,” Taguma said.
He said commercial banks in Zambia were not willing to lend farmers on a long-term basis.
“To grow coffee on a viable basis, we need financing of between eight and 13 years, but banks cannot lend on those terms. The labour costs are also very high in this country and this is discouraging farmers,” Taguma said.
Taguma said coffee growers were also facing tougher competition from copper miners for road transport due to an unreliable railway network.
Taguma said transporting coffee to sea ports would become a problem as more foreign mining firms begin to use trucks to carry copper to Dar-Es-Salaam in Tanzania and Durban in South Africa.
In 2006, most farmers cut jobs and reduced their production in Zambia when the kwacha appreciated against the United States dollar by 30 percent.
Taguma said high fuel prices had also discouraged farmers who use irrigation equipment to grow coffee. Fuel costs almost $2 in the southern Africa country of 12 million people.
However Taguma said that the future was bright despite the problems farmers were facing.
Zambia does not grow coffee on a large scale like Kenya and Ethiopia, but its coffee is sought by buyers in Japan, the United States and Europe.
If you are interested in growing, you will grow. good luck.
This guy is very specific on the problems that coffee growers are facing. Infact, all industrialists in Zambia tell the specific problems they face and what needs to be done. What’s bugging is no one seems to be acting to address them. Real development entails dealing with such problems once and for all, and not just the paper percentages been celebrated by LPM and cronies, with text book economists telling us ‘it will trickle down’. The natural law of ’cause and effect’ tells us that the ‘trickling down’ has to be caused and not just waited upon.
Zambia coffee is good, it is another field for higher employment. Increase productivity and reduce joblessness.
One sector that is well sort