STiR coffee and tea magazine

34 STiR coffee and tea / Issue 3, 2022 (June / July) T anzania, one of Africa's top coffee producers, is expected to increase output by 3.7% in the 2021/2022 season according to projections by analysts who attribute the growth in coffee volumes to increased use of fertilizer as more growers accessed credit from financial institutions and the improvement in operations of many primary coffee cooperative societies. An improvement in coffee extension services, the entry of most coffee trees into the most productive period of their two to three years yield circle and enhancement of Tanzania's marketing systems see projections of the country's total coffee output raised to 1.4 million 60-kg bags in the 2021/2022 coffee year according to statistics by Tanzania Coffee Board (TCB), a gov- ernment coffee industry regulator and the US Department of Agriculture (USDA). Coffee production in Tanzania increased steadily since 2019/2020 when the output was 1.25 million bags that surged to 1.35 million bags in 2020/2021, a large share of it arabica coffee grown using diverse farm systems including pure stand/smallholder, intercropped and bananas/smallholder, or estate coffee production. This emerging upward trend in Tanzania's coffee production, from a combined area of 265,000 hectares, is a result of a combination of factors at both the domestic and international market including the motivation to grow quality coffee triggered by new regulations that allowed coffee producers to directly enter contracts with foreign buyers to eliminate middlemen, thereby increasing profitability for growers according to a USDA annual report on Tanzania coffee industry that was prepared by Benjamin Mtaki, Matt Snyder, and Jason Wrobel. "Foreign buyers often require growers to adopt practices such as stumping, pruning, weeding, mulching, and fertilizing to help ensure quality production and as these practices proliferate in Tanzania, yields will rise," the report says. "Additionally, many coffee-growing regions are expected to enter the most productive period of their crop-bearing cycle, increasing yields every two to three years," it adds. An estimated 90% of Tanzania's mild arabica, followed by hard arabica and robusta comes from smallholder farmers, while the remaining 10% comes from large coffee estates with the slopes of Mt Kilimanjaro and Mt Meru that rise to altitudes of 1,000-2,500 meters above sea level producing the largest Bright Outlook for Tanzania's Coffee Industry By Shem Oirere Tanzania coffee farmer. share of the arabica coffee. This breed of coffee accounts for 70% of Tanzania's total production. Currently, the regions around Lake Victoria, with altitudes of between 800-900m above sea level, particularly in the Kagera region, are synonymous with Tanzania's robusta coffee, which accounts for 30% of the country's total green coffee output. Tanzania's coffee cup profile has been segmented into two categories of northern coffees, character- ized by its tendency to "to be pleasant in aroma, rich in acidity and body, sweet taste with balanced flavors due to the mineral nutrients from volcanic soils." Then there is the southern coffee has been described as "medium body and fine acidity with good fruity and floral aromatic taste." Tanzania's coffee output is expected to in- crease further under the recently launched 2021- 2025 Tanzania Coffee Board's strategic plan that targets production of 5 million bags in the next four years. Components of the plan include the distribution of at least 20 million seedlings ev- ery year and increasing Tanzania's share of spe- cialty coffee from 37% to 70% by the end of the 2024/2025 coffee year. The plan's objectives are partly supported by activities of various non-governmental organiza- tions (NGOs) such as Vi-Agroforestry, Hanns R. Neumann Stiftung, Solidaridad, Mark Up, and Ag- ricultural Non-State Actors Forum (ANSAF). For example, Vi-Agroforestry, in partnership with ANSAF, BRAC International, Café Africa Tanzania, and Tanzania Coffee Research Institute (TaCRI), implemented the €3.75 million (US$3.95 million) Smallholder Coffee Development Project in Tanzania's Southern Highlands (CODE-P) with financing from the European Union and Sweden for a four-year period between 2020-2024. Through the project at least 24,000 new cof- fee farmers will be equipped with skills on cof- fee production, postharvest, and marketing. The initiative will also "strengthen 60 coffee primary cooperatives actively working in the targeted areas and transform them into centers for providing and disseminating agricultural inputs, technology, and information." In what could boost production even further, TCB also intensified campaigns to promote do- mestic coffee consumption currently estimated at a modest 50,000 bags. The local consumption is partly constrained by what TCB says is the prefer- ence by consumers in Tanzania for drinking tea "than coffee due to tradition and high price of cof- fee relative to tea in the local market." Tanzania's annual per capita consumption of coffee is a mere 0.6kg compared to the 3.4kgs in the country's leading coffee export destination, Ja- pan. TCB says it looks forward to increasing the local consumption to 15% of the country's coffee output in the next 10 years. Credit: Coffee Partners.

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