The Tanzania Coffee Board (TCB) has identified six new areas that are potential for coffee production, making a total of 13 regions undertaking coffee cultivation countrywide. In an interview this week, TCB Director General eng. Adolph Kumburu, said the board will sensitise farmers to plant Tanzania Coffee Research Institute’s (Tacri) newly researched varieties in the areas.
The aim is to increase coffee production to 100,000 tonnes by the year 2020, according to the board DG. He said TCB Ffeld officers have been stationed in all coffee producing zones where offices had been established in 2009. Shedding more lights on the new strategy, Kumburu said it is a collaborative effort by industry stakeholders and has been developed as a result of new developments in the coffee industry.
They include amendment of the Crop Board Act and implementation of the new Crop Board reforms, he said. According to him, the strategy sets out a mission on how to increase coffee production from the present 50,000 metric tonnes to at least 80,000 tonnes by 2016 and reach 100,000 tonnes four years thereafter.
It is envisaged that the increase in production volumes will go hand in hand with the increase in quality from the present 35 per cent premium coffee to at least 70 per cent of total production. The move by the Board and stakeholders has comes at the right time when the price of coffee in world market has been soaring.
World coffee price in December last year reached the highest level since October 1994, according to the International Coffee Organization (ICO). The trend led to a sharp rise in the monthly average of the ICO composite indicator price from 173.90 US cent in November, to 184.26 US cents per pound in December.
According to ICO report, world coffee exports reached 7.6 million bags in November last year in contrast to 6.7 million bags over the same period in the previous year. The report says exports in the first two months of 2010 / 2011 (October and November) increased by 9.3 per cent to 15.6 million bags, compared to 14.2 million bags in the same period during the previous year.
During the past twelve months which ended in November last year, exports of Arabica coffee totalled 63.2 million bags compared to 61.1 million bags the previous year. On the other hand, Robusta exports amounted to 31.8 million bags compared to 36.2 million bags over the the period under review.
Tanzania is Africa’s largest coffee producer after Ethiopia, Uganda and Ivory Coast. Approximately seventy percent of coffee produced in Tanzania is Arabica, with most of it grown in the high altitude regions of Mount Kilimanjaro, Arusha and Mbeya.
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