Farmers’ perceptions of coffee price volatility in Rukiri Subcounty Ibanda district, Uganda

Abstract

Coffee is one of the most important cash crops in Uganda playing a major role in the livelihoods of many poor people as a source of income and to the economy as a major foreign exchange earner for the country. However, commodity price volatility has been a long standing issue causing price fluctuations an issue that has been amplified by other shocks in the market fundamentals such as labor and production costs. This study aimed at finding out the perceptions of coffee farmers on price volatility in Rukiri sub-county Ibanda district. Structured individual coffee farmer questionnaire was used to collect data from 48 farmers of whom 5 were females and 43 males, who were selected at random to avoid biased results from the study. The data collected was coded and entered into SPSS (version 16.0) computer software and then ported into Stata and Microsoft excels for analysis. Male and married farmers were most involved in coffee growing; the mean number of year completed by farmers in school was 10 years and the major occupation of the respondents was farming (72.9%). The main practice adopted by farmers to overcome the challenge of price volatility was banana growing (60.4%) that compensated farmers with income to meet costs of living. Household size, being a female farmer, being married and belonging to a farmer group were found to influence the number of practices used by farmers to mitigate the effect of price volatility on their livelihoods.