Coffee tours on mountain Elgon slopes: Yes, Uganda is an appealing destination to any travelers with a lot of features that provide wonderful views and memories to the viewers. Uganda is known to be a wildlife safari destination with several tourist activities such as cultural safari tours, game drive safaris. Sport fishing, chimpanzee and gorilla trekking, explore the Nile and boat cruise trips, farm tours, beach vacation tours among very many activities that you can engage in. indeed as describes by church hill, Uganda is a pear of Africa considering all the activities that happening and taking place.

Apart from wildlife, and scenic landscape views, and a welcoming population, Uganda offers an interesting tourist activity that involves traveling taking visits to coffee plantations which are explored in mountain Elgon. Mountain Elgon is a dormant volcano in east Africa that is divided or bisected by the border between Kenya and Uganda. This volcanic mountain was formed as the result of volcanic activity and the Mt Elgon Uganda falls under the rain shadow which makes the slopes of the mountains so conducive for crops because the soils are fertile and it receives large amounts of rainfall.

It is important to note that Uganda largely depends on agriculture and the majority of the people are agriculturalists. Very many cash crops are grown including coffee, trees, vanilla, cocoa, millet, yams, and many others. To be specific, coffees contribute to 20% of Uganda’s total efforts which is equivalent to around 50million United States dollars per annum. This means that coffees remain a strong exporter and contributor to the economy in Uganda.

Coffee tours in Uganda will make you explore the foothills of mountain Elgon, visit the households and explore different processes that coffee passes through from harvesting up to packaging. Remember that you have to plant coffee, harvest it, process, preserve, and purchase it. You will be able to learn more about these processes with the experienced local farmers from the region.

Visitors will need to travel to Kapchorwa coffee growing region for about 5 hours which is equivalent to about 280 kilometers from Kampala, the capital city of Uganda. Upon reaching there, you will be welcomed by a local guide who indigenous in this place and who is also a coffee farmer and he or she will share the exciting experiences about coffee handling experience which rewarding and exceptional. Traditionally, the coffee grown here is Arabic coffee which survives well on fertile volcanic soils and the high altitude of 1,600m- 1,900m. These conditions are well present in the Kapachorwa which has favored the growing of Arabic coffee in these slopes.

Landholders and farmer use their land to plant coffee and sometime you might find when they have mixed it with bananas in the farming practice called intercropping. This is very important as banana provide shades to the coffee and sometimes enables the cross-pollination process to take place. Coffee plantation takes a lot of time from nursery bed preparation to harvesting which is labor-intensive.

The volcanic soils with a lot of minimum nutrients do not need a lot of fertilizers and the fact the weather is unfavorable crop pests and diseases which makes the coffee farms so healthy and coffee grows very fast. Farmers grow and harvest coffee and later on it is sold to the big farmers who own stores where trucks can be accessed .once bought, the coffee beans are sorted, graded, removal of coffee husks, ground, and packed, and taken to the beverages for selling and marketing.

The most experienced gains during coffee tours in Uganda involves visiting coffee farmers on a household level. Here as the visitor, you will participate in picking ready coffee beans that are always red from the garden together with the farm owner, sun dries it, pound it to remove the outer layer called the husk. After this, coffees are roasted over a regulated fire and pound the roasted coffee and then pound this roasted coffee to obtain powder which can be mixed with hot water and you enjoy the locally made Arabic coffee drink which you have made for yourself.

Besides being the source of income to the farmers and creating employment opportunities, coffee provides other several benefits to other areas’ economies through the value chain. Transporters to factories and market get coffee benefits, those dealing in weighing, and processing and the loaders also obtain befits from coffee indirectly. Coffee now is used in several manufacturing industries as an ingredient and it is being exported outside Uganda for increasing the GDP to Uganda’s economy