Ugandan Coffee Exports May Fall 1.5% This Month From a Year Ago on Drought

Coffee shipments from Uganda, Africa’s second-largest producer of the beans, may fall 1.5 percent this month from a year earlier after a drought cut yields, the Uganda Coffee Development Authority said.

Shipments may decline to 196,000 60-kilogram (132-pound) bags from 198,988 bags a year earlier, the authority said in an e-mailed statement today. The forecast is 9.8 percent lower than the 217,284 bags exported in August, it said.

Uganda experienced a drought last year and earlier this year that the Ministry of Agriculture attributed to climate change. As a result, the authority cut its coffee export forecast for the year to Sept. 30 by 3.6 percent to 2.7 million bags from an earlier estimate.

The decline in Ugandan coffee production has largely been due to a slump in output of the robusta variety of the crop, the authority said. Exports of robusta have fallen 19 percent in the 11 months through August, while arabica shipments have climbed 27 percent, largely because of better crop husbandry methods, the authority said.

“The continued fall in robusta performance is on account of climate change, characterized by long dry spells that usually coincide with bean formation and development in the robusta- growing areas,” the authority said.

Uganda is Africa’s biggest producer of robusta, which is mainly used in instant coffee, while arabica beans are brewed by specialty companies, such as Starbucks Corp.

Ugandan coffee output slumped from more than 4 million bags in 1996-97 after coffee wilt disease destroyed the crop, according to the authority. New planting and improving farm management may help the country boost output to 4.5 million bags by 2015, the authority has said.

The East African nation is the continent’s second-largest producer of coffee, after Ethiopia. Robusta accounts for about 85 percent of Uganda’s annual output.

To contact the reporter on this story: Fred Ojambo in Kampala at fojambo@bloomberg.net

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