KAMPALA-Coffee Farmers all over Uganda have been asked to embrace European Union Regulation on Deforestation – Free (EUDR) by voluntarily participating in the forthcoming registration exercise.
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Dr. Kyalo Gerald, the Director Development Services in Uganda Coffee Development Authority (UCDA) in a media engagement held at Hotel Africana, revealed that they are in final stages of ensuring that the registration exercise of all coffee Farmers country wide commences as soon as possible.
“We are still in contracting process for ABI. It’s the one moving ahead of us , the contracting process may be completed this week. It means, effective next week or thereabout we should start preparations to register farmers.”
Kyalo emphasized it that farmer registration exercise has no any harm or negative impact to the registered individual/farm because data obtained will be protected and used only for coffee traceability and planning purposes.
“We shall be conducting farmer registration in the sense of complying with EU Directives. Through this exercise, we shall collect mark geo-cordinates of the coffee farms (mapping) and for the farms above 10 acres we shall be taking their polygons as per the European Union law.”
He further added that basing on the level of senstization they have done , they don’t expect any farmer to defy this directive which is aimmed at protecting their market In European Union countries.
Samson Emong, the Country Manager of Café Africa asked Ugandan Farmers to welcome the Registration exercise because its transparent, focusing on improving coffee quality.
“We are still in discussions about the data warehouse, how data will be processed , how data will be traced and data protection. We have to ensure that no one in the coffee chain will be taken out of business because of one directive or compliance related issues.”
He further added that its only through provision of required data, that the European Union will be convinced that Uganda’s coffee isn’t a result of deforestation.
As part of the plan, various key stakeholders like Farmers , Religious leaders, Cultural leaders and others are going to be engaged through out the whole process.
In 2023, European Union adopted EUDR as a legislative measure to prevent products linked to deforestation and forest degradation from entering their market.
The regulation became a law on 29th June 2023 and it will enter into application on 30th December 2024 for most companies and on 30th June 2025 for micro and small enterprises.
The National Coffee Act 2021 which gives UCDA powers to regulate, promote and over see the coffee subsector provides that all coffee Farmers will be registered, after which they will be issued with identification numbers.
The data captured from the farmers will include the size of land and the number of trees.
