Coffee is one of Tanzania’s primary agricultural export commodities. It accounts for about 5% of total export value and about 20% of Tanzania’s foreign exchange earnings. Coffee has been the mainstay of the country’s agriculture based economy since its introduction as cash crop around 100 years ago. More than 400 000 farmer families derive their livelihoods from growing coffee with an estimate of 2 400 000 additional people being employed directly or indirectly by coffee related business in the country.
Tanzania coffee is grown on the slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro and Mount Meru in the Northern areas under the shade of banana trees. Coffee is also produced in the southern highlands of Mbeya and Ruvuma regions where coffee is both intercropped with banana and some areas are pure stand. The total area under coffee is estimated to 265 000 hectares for both Arabica and Robusta in which the contribution of Arabia is 70% and for Robusta is 30% of the total coffee production in Tanzania which constitute average production for the past five years (2002/05-2008/09) to be 51 777 tones of clean coffee.
The internal consumption of coffee has increased from 2% of the total production in 2003 to 7% in 2012. Realizing the importance of the coffee sector to the economy, the Tanzanian government put much effort to improve coffee production.
Coffee is sold in form of cherry or parchment. Other coffee producers can sell their coffee in the auction conducted at Tanzania Coffee Board every season and others may ask for license and bypass the auction and use direct export. The cost of production of coffee to smallholder farmers is high due to high input cost.
Low prices have frequently been cited as the primary cause of the stagnation and decline in Tanzanian coffee production. A clear decrease in coffee output in Kilimanjaro has been observed since 1981/82. A relative increase in output that occurred in 1996/97 was a brief deviation from the general trend. Therefore this study comes to determine the contribution of coffee production to household income in Mwika Msae Kinyamvuo village.
