Improving the wellbeing of smallholder coffee farmers at Masaba (Mount Elgon) in Uganda: An investigation of challenges and resources
by Anna Lina Bartl née Beinlich
Date of Examination:2024-08-23
Date of issue:2024-10-08
Advisor:Prof. Dr. Claudia Neu
Referee:Prof. Dr. Claudia Neu
Referee:Prof. Dr. Matin Qaim
Referee:Prof. Dr. Reimund P. Rötter
Sponsor:I would like to thank the Ausgleichsstiftung Landwirtschaft und Umwelt for covering the expenses of my second stay.
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Abstract
English
The coffee sector in Uganda is of great socio-economic importance for the country. For many smallholder farmers in the Masaba region (Mount Elgon) in Uganda, the cultivation of Arabica coffee is the most important source of income. It is common knowledge that coffee producers often live in conditions that barely ensure their survival. The low standard of living and the diverse and numerous challenges faced by producers lead to the assumption that "the balance between an individual's resource pool and the challenges they face" (Dogde et al. 2012) is not achieved with regards to the physical, social and psychological components of coffee producers' wellbeing. Due to changing weather conditions and decreasing acreage per household, it can be assumed that the wellbeing of coffee producing households will continue to deteriorate. Therefore, this dissertation aims to identify potentials for improving the wellbeing of coffee producers at Masaba (Mount Elgon) in Uganda. The dissertation consists of three articles dealing with the challenges and resources of coffee producers in this region. Each article has its own introduction, methods, results and conclusion. All parts are based on primary data from coffee growing households in the three sub-counties of Bulegeni, Simu and Namisuni. In order to assess the feasibility of the survey and to test content and construct validity as well as reliability, pretests were developed and conducted in the region during a visit in August 2017. Together with the National Agricultural Research Organization (NARO) of Uganda, the survey structure was improved in the following months and additional accounting material was developed. Following on from this, two field visits of three months each took place in Uganda. In the first survey round in 2018, data was collected from 460 coffee-producing households through interview-based surveys, resulting in a final dataset of 431 interviews with high-quality data. The same households were visited one year later and interviewed again using the same questions and some additional topics. In 2019, the extreme rainfall hampered our fieldwork throughout our stay. In addition to the inaccessibility of some farms, we found that some families had moved away, the previously interviewee had died or was too sick or too busy to participate in the second part of the survey. After data correction, 360 households remained with high quality interviews from two rounds of the survey, which were analyzed in the following months. The first article provides a better understanding of what constitutes the wellbeing of coffee producers. Therefore, an indicator of wellbeing was developed. The results of the exploratory principal component Analysis show that the interaction of trust, security, housing and land ownership delivers an adequate representation of the wellbeing of the producers. The weighting of each factor ranged from trust, which had the highest weighting, to safety and housing, and land ownership, which had the lowest weighting. Despite this, housing and landholding are identified as the factors with the greatest impact for all sub-counties. Low physical wellbeing leads to lower overall household wellbeing, compared to socio-psychological wellbeing. The final indicator shows differences in wellbeing between and also within sub-districts. Wellbeing has an impact on the perception of limitations in quality of life, but also on the basic conditions of coffee production. Therefore, the main objective of the second article is to understand the coffee producers' deficit perception, impact and distribution within and between the three sub-counties and the two survey rounds. I found a high to very high constraint level for most indicators. Two-thirds of the group perceived the situation as having either deteriorated overall or has improved for some indicators and deteriorated for others. The other third of the farmers either perceived no change or felt that the situation had improved in 2019. Improved skills, knowledge, and resources like water taps brought into this region, greater competition between coffee-buying companies, and access to information on prices led to a favorable increase in the price of products and to a reduction in input costs and thereby to a better income situation for the coffee producing households. Regarding the experienced deterioration, the interviewees listed the following factors as reasons: the extreme rainfalls in 2019 led to nearly impassable roads, more expensive and dangerous transportation of products, fewer choices about the time of selling, lower coffee prices but higher input prices, and ultimately, lower output from coffee production. Additionally, the heavy rainfall also caused mudslides and flooding of houses and toilets, which in turn led to homelessness, loss of harvests, higher infection rates, difficulties transporting sick and injured people to hospitals, and ultimately the loss of life and an overall decrease in life quality. Based on these findings, the third essay aims to investigate how the coffee farmers experience demanding and abruptly occurring scenarios and the consequences resulting from weather-related, farm-performance-related, market-price-related, and individual disasters. It further examines coping strategies to prevent worst-case scenarios and chain reactions. It shows that most disasters are experienced by more than 90 percent of the total sample in both years, depending on the type of disaster with varying intensity between the different sub-counties of the area. While in 2018 disasters were experienced at a level from mild to moderate, the perceived intensity level increased to moderate to severe in 2019. This significant difference between the two years can be explained by the fact that in 2019, the first part of the year was dominated by severe drought conditions, followed by a period of extreme rainfall events. On the one hand, the data shows that coping strategies were not implemented by many farmers, mainly due to a lack of resources, money, or knowledge. On the other hand, those coping mechanisms that were implemented, are diverse in nature and either have a positive side-effect, for example on the ecological system of the farms, or could have a negative side-effect in the long run or even lead to negative chain reactions. This is given for example when coping mechanisms include selling assets, property, or even land. All essays conclude that worst-case scenarios are more likely with the increased vulnerability of the households due to a proportionately greater socioeconomic impact on those households and, respectively, the lower resource level at their disposal preventing the implementation of proper coping strategies. External factors like the extreme rainfalls in 2019 impacted the deficiency and disaster perception and related coping mechanisms. Due to climate change and its negative impact on both general life quality and conditions for farm management it can be assumed that, if no action is taken, the wellbeing of the participating households will further deteriorate. It is not very likely that the farmers can empower themselves with the given resources to a degree that enables them to cope with these types of disasters without any external help, either in the form of skill-building or in the form of tools to better face challenges or improve their income situations. Changes are mainly perceived to result from external forces. Deterioration is mainly explained by perceived changes in weather conditions that are caused by climate change. Activities, knowledge, information, and services brought into communities from the outside were mentioned as major reasons for improvements. But also, the trend towards higher competition between buyers was perceived as improving the situation for farmers, resulting in less opportunistic behavior and better quality and price awareness. The implementation of a verified open-source information system, for instance, a radio program that provides verified information on coffee prices, pests, diseases or suitable inputs, predicted weather scenarios, etc. could further improve the situation. A final transfer to the economy concludes that a continuous value chain with year-round support in dealing with the challenges in coffee production and targeted measures to improve the supply of households can improve the wellbeing of the coffee producing households at Masaba (Mount Elgon). The focus on knowledge transfer, but also the individual and year-round advice from a local team on site, the increase in income from coffee while maintaining independence, the increased income diversity and the resulting year-round strengthened liquidity, even between coffee harvests, as well as the complete and above all mutual transparency can be identified as key factors for success. However, the density of data generated during the management of the 44 participating farms was identified as an inhibiting factor for the scaling of the model. The development of an app, which has already been launched, is intended to remedy this and can also enable or simplify the implementation of measures for other market participants. This dissertation concludes that the negative trend in the wellbeing of the coffee producing households at Masaba, which is accelerated by climate change, can be partially counteracted by intensive measures - especially with regard to expanding access to information and improving road conditions (after land registration). Externally contributed resources can help coffee producers to better meet the increasing challenges in the future and thus strengthen the conditions for coffee production, the standard of living and the wellbeing of the producers and possibly even improve aspects of both.
Keywords: coffee; wellbeing; climate change; Uganda; composite indicator; Mount Elgon; smallholder farmers; preconditions for coffee farming; perceptions of climate change; resource levels; knowledge accessibility; deficiencies in conditions for farming,; constraints on quality of life