The story of coffee producing areas | where will the small coffee farmers in Uganda go when the coffee crisis is coming?

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Uganda is pinning its hopes on the most valuable crops but must overcome the obstacles to climate change.

Coffee farmers in Kasese, Uganda, harvest ripe coffee cherries. PHOTOGRAPH BY JONATHAN TORGOVNIK, GETTY IMAGES

── Sam Massa, Uganda Live, does not drink coffee. Like many Ugandans, he prefers seasoned tea with milk. And like many Ugandans, he said: "We are part of coffee, and coffee is in our blood." "

Massa lives on the top of an extinct volcano that straddles the border between Uganda and Kenya, and the mud-brick hut in the middle of the coffee grove is his home. Some of the trees here were planted by his great-grandfather over a hundred years ago. Massa's ancestors were coffee farmers like him, and almost all of his annual income came from coffee beans, which ended up as coffee drunk by people in the United States and other distant countries.

This place is one of the oldest and most respected coffee producing areas in East Africa. The air is fresh and cool, and the hillside can be seen everywhere with continuous scenery and sparkling waterfalls. But the mountain is about to get into trouble. In fact, the trouble has come to Massa's door.

Uganda has always had two rainy seasons, from March to May and from October to December. Small farms in East Africa, like those in Massa, are almost irrigated, that is, crops, including coffee, are grown entirely on rainfall. But in the second rainy season of 2016, there was little rain in Massa's area, and when the coffee was harvested in January 2017, the harvest was very poor. This is not an accidental anomaly. "the weather has been abnormal in the past few years," he said. "

"rainfall patterns have completely changed in the past 20 years," he said. "it rains when you don't expect it. When it should rain, it is sunshine or drought. "

As a result, the Massa family are living a hard life. If you don't have three meals, you usually eat your own bananas. Medicine is a rare luxury. There is no way to buy the tools and fertilizers needed for the upcoming planting season. What bothers Massa most is that for his five children, he can only afford four of them to go to school, and his eldest son is a junior high school student, but he stays at home.

In addition to the coffee tree, Massa once had another important asset: a healthy cow, raised in the barn next to the house, which could provide precious fresh milk. However, after the poor coffee harvest, Massa had to sell the cow in order to pay for his son's tuition.

"I really couldn't help it at that time," he said. "I hope God will give me another cow. "

Fresh coffee berries harvested in western Uganda. This country is the second largest coffee producer in Africa after Ethiopia and the largest robastian coffee grower on the continent. PHOTOGRAPH BY TREVOR SNAPP, BLOOMBERG VIA GETTY IMAGES

Coffee and climate

Massa's story may be familiar to many coffee farmers in Uganda and around the world. Coffee is very vulnerable to climate change. According to the newly published global survey of coffee research, rising temperatures and unstable rainfall have increased the diseases and insect pests of coffee trees and reduced the quantity and quality of coffee beans. Overall, the world's coffee production area may be reduced by 50% due to climate pressures by 2050, the survey found. This will deal a severe blow to the global supply of coffee, which is already struggling to catch up with demand. A paper published in the journal Nature in June 2017 makes a similar forecast for Ethiopia, fully highlighting the situation in East Africa.

For coffee addicts in the United States and Europe, these shocks are likely to cost a little more money for coffee. But for the world's 25 million coffee farmers, most of whom are small farmers like Massa, the consequences will be much more frightening.

Uganda is particularly vulnerable because coffee is the economic foundation of the country. Now scientists, government officials, farmers and entrepreneurs, from the top of Mount Mount Elgon to downtown Kampala, to remote areas still plagued by rebel leader Joseph Joseph Kony, are finding ways to save the coffee industry from climate change.

Written by: Tim McDonnell