Stephen Lukenge

YOUR COFFEE FARM CAN LOOK BEAUTIFUL AND STILL BE A BAD INVESTMENT. A coffee farm can have beautiful green trees, excellent spacing and a promising future on paper yet still become one of the worst investments you ever make. I know this might upset some people but planting coffee and running a profitable coffee business are two very different things. We have become very good at teaching people how to plant coffee but are we doing equally well at teaching them how to calculate the cost of establishing a farm, maintaining it before production, paying workers, managing drought and eventually making a profit? I keep meeting people who want to start coffee farming because they have heard how much money coffee can make. But when you ask them how much it will cost to establish one acre, maintain it until meaningful production, harvest, process and transport the coffee to market, the answers are often unclear. Some calculate the cost of seedlings and land then forget that a coffee farm needs money long before it starts giving money back. Others calculate their future income using the best possible yields and prices as though drought, pests, labour costs and market fluctuations don’t exist. That is not business planning; that is gambling with your money and calling it agriculture. As someone involved in coffee farming, trading and agronomy, I believe we need to change this conversation. Before you plant your first coffee tree, know your establishment costs, understand your variety, prepare a realistic maintenance budget, identify your market and calculate different production scenarios. Ask yourself what happens if yields are lower than expected or prices fall. And please, don’t establish five acres simply because someone told you coffee is profitable. Start with the acreage you can manage properly, learn from it and expand when the numbers make sense. I want to see more young people enter coffee farming but I don’t want them entering blindly investing their savings and discovering years later that nobody taught them how to calculate the business behind the trees. We don’t just need more coffee farmers. We need financially informed coffee farmers who can turn production into a sustainable business. Here is the hard truth: some people are selling dreams of coffee wealth without explaining the financial reality behind those dreams. It is easy to encourage a young person to plant 450 trees per acre when you are not the one paying for the land, labour, maintenance or the years of waiting. And when that farm struggles the person who gave the advice may be nowhere to be seen but the young farmer is left with the losses. We must stop romanticising coffee farming and start preparing people for the business it really is. A farmer cannot eat projections, pay workers with promises or recover an investment with motivational speeches. If we genuinely want more young people in coffee, we must teach them how to make money from it not just how to plant. Let’s talk numbers not just seedlings. For God and my country #YouthInCoffee

MY FRIENDS, LET’S TALK. Many of us work Monday to Friday in the city, grinding hard, surviving on salary… yet back home we have idle land just lying there. And every weekend? We jump into clubs, events, vibes and flexes then return on Monday complaining about “things being hard.” But let me challenge you today: What if you used just one weekend a month differently? What if instead of blowing money on enjoyment, you put some sweat on the soil that belongs to your family? Let me tell you something from experience. When I was still working an office job, every Friday after work I would get on the road straight to Bundibugyo. I would travel all night, reach Saturday morning, and head straight to the farm. I worked the whole of Saturday, and on Sunday I did half-day, then jumped on a bus back to Kampala. By 11pm Sunday, I was already back in the city tired, yes, but fulfilled. And here is the part most people don’t know: What I earned from those weekend farm activities was more than my monthly salary from the office job. Just imagine that. Youths with land, I’m speaking to you directly: This thing of thinking farming is for old people will keep many of you struggling for no reason. Your land is your gold. Your village is your opportunity. Your weekend is your power. You don’t need 20 acres. Even 1 acre can change your financial story if you stop wasting time and start building something. While others are spending weekends consuming, you can spend yours creating. The future is for those who use what they already have. Let’s rethink how we use our free time. Let’s turn weekends into wealth. Let’s activate that land back home. Let’s build something our children will thank us for. Your land is not idle YOU are. Time to change that. Anyways happy weekend pals from the farm For God and my country Uganda 🇺🇬