Pet Nat

The smallest farmer conglomerate of the Empaako Collective only contains 7 growers, a decision deliberately taken by Mwesige David, Chairman of the village, who hereby followed but mostly reiterated our idea of buliding robust groups that deeply trust each other and are willing
to move forward rather together than alone. David, who we’ve been visiting every time ever since our first trip to Uganda, is one of the few farmers who had background in agronomy and spoke little bits of English, too. His farm is not far away of Eli’s plot in the the region of Mitandi/Kibaati.
One additional reason for the size of the group is the common practice of “crop-hiring”, as Eli and the others are calling it, where farmers accept low amounts of cash before the start of the season due to extremely precarious situations in exchange of the full harvest rights on a part or the whole tree count of their coffee gardens. Local empowered intermediaries who have less cash-flow issues secure huge volumes for bargain even before the actual harvest period while making farmers depending to them
and leaving them with no chance to actually sustain with their own production.

The Tuganzangane group is now happy to have found a different sales channel including the invest in better practices, even starting from actually letting the coffee cherries ripen to pure maturity instead of stripping a whole
branch at once due to financial pressure. David’s group has also been one of the first to enter the loan program offered by Emata to receive cash advances before harvest which they can then re-pay in the coffee cherries harvested while Semilla/Empaako guarantees for their ability to borrow money.