Hope as more farmers respond to increased coffee production

In order to speed up the revival of a coffee plantation in Kilimanjaro Region, the Manushi Sinde Agricultural Marketing Co-operative Society (Amcos) based in Moshi District aims to produce 60,000 quality seedlings annually.

Amcos Chairman, Professor Boshe John said here since been motivated to plant coffee trees, a move that has led to increased demand for coffee seedlings.

“This has proved successful even in the production of coffee for the year 2017/2018 when a total of 15,000 kilograms of coffee was collected against a mere 9,000kg collected in the 2016/2017 season.

“We are therefore expecting to collect 30,000 kilograms of coffee in the 2018/2019 season. We have begun a programme to plant new quality coffee seedlings to meet the needs of our members, which is more than 10,000 seedlings annually… there are also additional requirements of seedlings derived from the needs of those who are not members of our party,” he said.

He said that the party already has begun production of seedlings for the starting they have prepared nurseries for the best coffee seedlings 40,000 seedlings have already produced in nurseries.

Already 12,000 seedlings have been distributed to farmers and we expect until July this year, all of the seedlings will have been distributed to those needed he said.

He said to improve the services relating to coffee production, the Amcos leadership expects to open a shop of agricultural inputs in the 2019/2020 as part of a plan aimed at producing and quality coffee.

The Amcos Manager, Mr. Adrian Munishi, revealed that their biggest challenge was to mould young people in best practices of coffee.

He also singled out the issue of the availability of agricultural inputs as a challenge, saying they were looking forward to setting up a store at their office so that farmers could easily access the same.

Tanzania Coffee Board Acting Director General, Mr. Primus Kimaryo said the board would continue with efforts to address challenges facing the coffee industry in order to increase productivity and well being of their farmers.