Coffee Trap:

The current change in economic, social and environmental conditions worldwide has fostered major adjustments to farmers all over the world. Farmers have been forced to make adjustments in order to ensure that they fit in new settings. Recently, coffee production in Tanzania has remained stagnant because of problems including aging coffee trees, increasing production costs, decrease in return and unreliable market. Farmers have been forced not only to change their mode of farming but also to formulate different activities as alternatives against falling coffee earnings. These efforts are meant to assist the farmers in Mbinga to come out of what now seems to be the coffee trap . Findings confirm why Coffee farmers in Mbinga have maintained coffee cultivation: despite fluctuation in producer prices and increase in costs of production, coffee income is higher than any other non-coffee source bearing in mind that there is no feasible alternative to coffee cultivation. Therefore, coffee farmers in Mbinga can do better by learning how to live and cultivate coffee more profitable. Moreover, the newly opening window of speciality coffee is another option which coffee farmers can venture.

Autorentext

Dr. David Gongwe Mhando is a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Sustainable Rural Development (SCSRD), Sokoine University of Agriculture, Morogoro,Tanzania. His research interests focuses on rural livelihoods, farmer's organizations and value chain analysis. Currently, he is a JSPS Post Doctoral Research Fellow at Kyoto University, Japan