Big Investors Needed to Boost Organic Coffee

The Monitor (Kampala)
Dorothy Nakaweesi
Entebbe

Organic coffee production in Uganda needs urgent empowerment from big investors to be able to create sustainability, a leading coffee importer has said.

"Uganda's organic coffee is regarded as the best in the US market in terms of quality. If big companies come in, the industry will take off," Mr Shallom Berkman, the Manager of Urth Caffe, a leading importer of exclusively organic coffees and fine teas in US, said on Wednesday.

He was speaking at a three-day Third International Federation of Organic Agricultural Movement (IFOAM) organic coffee conference at the Imperial Botannical Beach Hotel Entebbe. He said his company is willing to invest in the organic coffee industry in Uganda.

He said the coffee revolution is the main challenge where all farmers have to go back to organic production. "I am impressed with so far what I have seen in Uganda, we are ready to invest in this and it will create a revolution," said Berkman. He said the market for organic coffee in the US is worth $12 million. Out of about 350,000 bags of coffee imported annually, 140,000 are purely organic and Africa contributes just three percent.

More...