The Harvest of Uganda’s Kisansa Coffee is just Ongoing
The Harvest of Uganda’s Kisansa Coffee is just Ongoing
The harvest of Kisansa coffee in Zirobwe, Luwero district is ongoing and the Slow Food Uganda team just came from a regular field visit to see the farmers and monitor activities related to the harvesting. Kisansa is an old coffee variety that originally appeared in a forest in Uganda and thanks to its high yield, good resistence to all known coffee diseases and good adaptation to climate change, Kisansa stays appreciated and grown by the Ugandan farmers until now. This is the reason why Kisansa was recognized by Slow Food and became part of the Presidia projects.
A riped coffee cherry of Kisansa coffee, just ready to be picked.
The harvest starts from January up to middle of April and the best producing trees can give a farmer up to 300 kg coffee cherries. This season looked very promising; in 2016 farmers received holistic training on coffee harvesting and post-harvest practices and were advised on the importance of a good, clean and fair product. The leader of the cooperative, Mr. Mubiru, was invited to Italy to attend Terra Madre where he experienced lots of attention for this unique coffee that he grows in his garden. The farmers are now trying to follow the best processing practices such as, drying coffee on raised African beds that allow air circulation, keeping the coffee away from goats and chickens, turning the beans a few times during the day to prevent fermentation, and picking only red ripened cherries that are just ready for harvesting. However, the Slow Food has identified many challenges that the farmers are now facing.
.This harvest season has been hit by a severe drought. The last rain in Zirobwe was observed more than 3 weeks ago and even though this condition is fine for coffee drying, the cherries are not juicy enough which will affect the coffee‘s taste. ‘‘The coffee cherry is green, then it turns yelow and after that it starts to go black. The ripening stage is missing‘‘ says one farmer from Zirobwe. Luckily, Kisansa is a tall tree with a deep root system, compared to many other coffee varieties, and can resist a drought relatively well. However, the harvest will still be affected.
After visiting a few gardens and talking to the farmers we also identified other challenges. Recently, there has been a road renovation and extension. Unfortunately, the machinery destroyed some coffee trees that grew by the road side and unfortunately for the farmers, these were due to be harvested within a couple of weeks. Among other challenges were non functional pulping machines which will be fixed by a technician within next days and missing nets for coffee drying that will now be distributed by Slow Food.
Kisansa trees in a garden of one of the coffee farmer that we visited in Zirobwe.
Even though the farmers are going through these challenges, they keep praying for the best and we all hope that the quality of Kisansa coffee will be significantly improved compared to the previous years thanks to the new practices being applied. We can’t wait to taste this incredible coffee and hope that the farmers and consumers alike will grow to appreciate this truly unique product.
Mr. Isaac Kabanda (on the left), the Slow Food member, is giving advice on coffee drying on the raised African beds that were build last year during the conducted training.
If you wish to know more about the unique Kisansa coffee, attend the Annual Coffee Festival organized by Slow Food Uganda, that will take place at the Ugandan Christian University in Mukono, 18th February 2017!
Author: Dana Siedem, Date: 3rd February 2017
Hello
I have worked to develop a process that can upgrade commodity/natural coffee to fine/specialty coffee. The process is very simple, cost effective and takes 8 days to produce the finished dry coffee beans. Wet washing is the common post-harvest process that is used to process and improve the taste of coffee. This process demands a lot of water and produces a large volumes of waste water that is heavily polluted. The process that we have developed reduces the volume of processing water by 80% and the volume of waster by the same factor. The process has very little pollutants. Waste water from wet washing is difficult to clean because of the complexity of pollutants. This water end up in the local waterways and affects water environment. We have worked mostly with natural/sundried robusta from Uganda and the resulting coffee has been evaluated by several coffee experts f.ex. Coffee Quality Institute (Zurich), scoring 85,58 cupping points; Coffee Consulate (Mannheim, Germany). We would very much like to set up a pilot plant in Uganda if we find some suitable partners that are already established in the coffee business. The coffee type Kisansa would fit very well in the upgrading process that has been developed. Please check me out on LinkedIn. Sincerely/George Mhlanga
Hello George, thanks for reaching out to Slow Food Uganda. We indeed welcome innovations most so those that are working to protect Mother Nature. We are supporting coffee communities from all parts of Uganda that are applying Agroecological practices to protect biodiversity and at the same time bring high quality coffee to the consumer. Kindly get in touch with John Wanyu at j.wanyu@slowfood.it and info@slowfooduganda.org for details and on how we can partner. Thank you.