Stichting Coffee Agronomy Training - Report of Activities 2020 (also known as Coffee Agronomy Training Foundation or CAT Foundation) - ANBI.nl
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Report of Activities 2020
Stichting Coffee Agronomy Training
(also known as Coffee Agronomy Training Foundation
or CAT Foundation)
About the CAT Foundation
The Coffee Agronomy Training (CAT) Foundation works to improve the livelihoods of poor smallholder
coffee farmers in developing countries through training and capacity building on Good Agricultural
Practices - increasing coffee yields through higher productivity and improving quality. Agronomy
training can substantially benefit smallholder farmers for relatively low investment in terms of time
and money. It provides a cost-efficient way to begin improving smallholder income and wellbeing. And
it allows to reach many farmers in a relatively short amount of time.
The CAT Foundation works with partners who conduct locally relevant field-based, practical and
participatory agronomy training to interested smallholder coffee farmers in selected coffee growing
areas. To hold the Foundation accountable to the impact achieved and to generate additional insights
into effective approaches to offer support to coffee farmers, the CAT Foundation rigorously monitors
and evaluates program activities across 3 key components: monitoring, best practice evaluation and/or
randomized controlled trials (RCT).
Partners
Hanns R. Neumann Stiftung (HRNS) was founded in 2005 by Michael R.
Neumann and his family. Building on the deep family history of working
side-by-side with smallholder coffee farmers as green coffee traders. The
objectives of the foundation are livelihood improvement in tropical rural
environments, youth projects as well as nature and the environment.
TechnoServe was founded in 1968 by Ed Bullard. The organization works
with enterprising people in the developing world to build competitive
farms, businesses and industries. Coffee being one of the focus area,
TechnoServe is helping to build a sustainable global coffee industry that
can lift millions of farming families out of poverty
Precision Agriculture for Development (PAD) is a US-based non-profit
organization with a mission to support smallholder farmers in developing
countries by providing customized information and services to increase
productivity, profitability, and environmental sustainability.
Michael Kremer is the Gates Professor of Developing Societies at Harvard
University, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, and a 2019 co-
recipient of the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory
of Alfred Nobel. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and
Sciences, a recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship and a Presidential Faculty
Fellowship, and was named a young global leader by the World Economic
Forum. His recent research examines education and health in developing
countries, immigration, and globalization. Michael Kremer leads the RCT
evaluating the impact of the Uganda Coffee Agronomy Training Program.
Vivian Hoffmann, IFPRI is a research economist. The International Food
Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) provides research-based policy solutions
to sustainably reduce poverty and end hunger and malnutrition in
developing countries. Vivian's research mainly focuses on child health,
food safety, and agricultural productivity in Eastern Africa. Vivian
Hoffmann leads the RCT together with Michael Kremer.
2
Laterite is a data, research and technical advisory firm that helps clients
understanding and analyse complex development challenges. Laterite is
our key partner responsible for the data collection throughout the RCT.
Impact Atlas is a real-time intelligence platform built to transform the
way social programs are managed and financed. HRNS is using Impact
Atlas to track farmers progress through their training program. From
registration to training attendance, curriculum completion and the
adoption of best practices on individual farms, field staff are able to
access, adapt and learn from the data in real time.
Crop Nutrition Laboratory Services (CROPNUTS) is East Africa’s leading
accredited agricultural laboratory and agronomy services company. It
offers lab testing services and independent agronomy services to farmers,
commercial businesses, agricultural research institutions and NGOs.
CropNuts helps the program to give customized fertilizer
recommendations based on soil & lead analysis conducted on site.
JDE Peet’s is the world's largest pure-play coffee and tea company by
revenue and served approximately 4,500 cups of coffee or tea every
second in 2020. JDE Peet's unleashes the possibilities of coffee and tea in
more than 100 developed and emerging markets, through a portfolio of
over 50 brands that collectively cover the entire category landscape led
by leading household names such as L’OR, Peet’s, Jacobs, Senseo,
Tassimo, Douwe Egberts, OldTown, Super, Pickwick and Moccona. In
2020, JDE Peet’s generated total sales of EUR 6.7 billion and employed a
global workforce of more than 19,000 employees. JDE Peet’s supports the
CAT Foundation through funding and project management support.
Keurig Dr Pepper (KDP) is a leading beverage company in North America,
with annual revenue in excess of $11 billion and nearly 27,000
employees. KDP holds leadership positions in soft drinks, specialty coffee
and tea, water, juice and juice drinks and mixers, and markets the #1
single serve coffee brewing system in the U.S. and Canada. KDP is
committed to sourcing, producing and distributing its beverages
responsibly through its Drink Well. Do Good. corporate responsibility
platform, including efforts around circular packaging, efficient natural
resource use and supply chain sustainability. KDP supports the CAT
Foundation through funding and project management support.
3
Background and Introduction
The CAT Foundation’s current program activities focus
on smallholder coffee farmers in Uganda. More than
70 per cent of Ugandans work in agriculture, making
this the sector of highest economic importance.
Within agriculture, coffee plays a major role as it is the
main cash crop and source of income for over 1.5
million coffee producing households and the main
contributor (approx. 20%) to export earnings for the
Government.
However, most coffee producers, being smallholders, face several key challenges which severely limit
their agricultural development potential due to lack of training on how best to improve production of
coffee (through Good Agricultural Practices).
In addition, over the last decade the effects of climate change have also become increasingly damaging
for coffee production with farmers lacking adaptation skills, such as soil water conservation and
climate change adaption.
2020 CAT Foundation Projects and Activities
To help farmers and households earn better incomes via improved production of coffee the
Foundation has developed various projects. Accompanying the project activities is a rigorous
evaluation component to better document the impact of the projects, i.e. analyzing whether farmers
who receive quality training have increased production and higher income generated from coffee as
compared to farmers that do not receive any training.
To make the evaluation of the project interventions scientifically robust, the projects are divided in
cohorts where the first cohorts serve as a learning cohort to inform the operational design of the
following cohorts. A randomized control trial (RCT) accompanies the second cohort to assess the
impact of agronomy training on the yields of participating coffee farmers.
As of end of 2020 the following projects below were running. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic in
Uganda, the setup, operation, and activities of the projects had to be adjusted as outlined below.
• The first case of COVID-19 was registered in March 2020, the first official Covid-19 related
death in July 2020.
• Strict lockdown measures introduced gradually in March and April 2020 incl. border closure,
ban on private and public transport, curfew, school closures, ban on social gatherings,
mandatory use of masks in public.
• Country borders reopened in October 2020.
• Measures were gradually relaxed allowing businesses to operate as well as public and private
transport following Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) developed by the Ministry of Health
(MoH).
• Schools have remained closed (apart from candidate classes) and are expected to reopen in
March 2021.
• As of February 5th, 2021 Uganda, has registered 39,842 cumulative cases of Covid-19.
4
A. Hanns R. Neumann Stiftung (HRNS): Uganda Agronomy Training Program
Despite all disruptions made by COVID-19, Cohort 1 activities came to a successful close at the end of
October 2020 having started in April 2018. In Kakumiro district, where Cohort 1 interventions were
implemented, 13,069 households registered of whom 12,848 remained active from start to end. In
total, 13,660 training sessions were offered, and 11,022 (86%) farming households attended each of
the training topics that were covered by extension workers at least once. In Cohort 2, trainings are still
ongoing and so far, 6,110 (62%) households have completed the curriculum. The two-year training
program is scheduled to end in mid-2021.
Cohort 1 Cohort 2
2019 2020 2019 2020
Farming HH-Active Members 12,902 12,848 9,926 9,855
Producer Groups/FFB 603 603 495 495
Field Officers 6 6 8 8
Field Extensionists 62 62 78 78
Contact Farmers 603 603 495 495
It is worth mentioning that in Uganda traditionally the man is considered head of household hence a
household is considered female headed when a woman is not married, divorced or a widow, therefore
this is not a good representation of the level of participation of women in the program. To determine
that, female attendance rates are a better indicator and will be discussed further in this report.
Male Headed Female Headed
Total Households
Households Households
Cohort 1 11,137 (87%) 1,711 (13%) 12,848
Cohort 2 8,376 (85%) 1,479 (15%) 9,855
Total 19,513 (86%) 3,190 (14%) 22,703
Due to design implications of the accompanying impact evaluation through the RCT, Cohort 2 targets
fewer beneficiaries but covers a vast area that stretches over three districts. The map shows the spread
of villages in Cohort 2: in blue the RCT treatment villages and in red the non-RCT villages, with different
geographical areas.
Distribution of RCT and Non-RCT Villages in Cohort 2
5
Best Practice Adoption for Cohort 1 Households in Kakumiro
• Laterite collected baseline data between November 2018 – April 2019, and endline data
between August 2020 – October 2020, with 20 months between baseline and endline.
• In Kakumiro district, many farmers had abandoned coffee before the UCAT program started.
Now the focus is on rejuvenation, pruning and correct intercropping. As shown in the analysis,
these are the practices with the most significant increase in adoption levels.
• Integrated Pest and Disease Management (IPDM) was seen by farmers as important to prevent
and control pest and disease outbreaks, which are becoming more common with increasing
temperatures and rainfall. Cultural (non-chemical) methods have been promoted in order to
limit the use of chemicals due to health and environmental risks, high costs of pesticides and
limited access to genuine products.
• While adoption of weeding appears to have decreased between baseline and endline, a
comparison over a one-year period (August 2019 – October 2019 and August 2020 – October
2020) shows a slight increase in the level of adoption from 32% to 34%. Seasonality may be an
influencing factor.
Baseline vs. Endline Best Practice Adoption
90%
80% 74% 76% 76%
71%
70% 65%
59% 59%
60% 53%
50%
50%
40% 36%
34% 34% 32%
30% 24% 24%
19%
20% 15% 16%
10% 0%0% 0%2%
0%
Baseline Endline
6
Success stories
7
B. TechnoServe (TNS): Uganda Coffee Farm College Program
TechnoServe’s UCAT Coffee Farm College Program is a four-year training program that aims to improve
incomes for 30,000 coffee farming households in Central and Western Uganda by increasing their
coffee farm productivity. This will be achieved by promoting improved coffee agronomic practices at
the farm level through a structured, farm-based training program and the improvement of coffee
farmers' access to recommended inputs.
The Coffee Farm College trainings are conducted by locally recruited and trained farmer trainers (FTs).
It is expected that up to 60% of the target households will adopt at least half of the coffee best
practices, which will translate to at least 50% increase in coffee yields. To validate the impact of the
program on yield increase, a Randomized Control Trial (RCT) by the International Food Policy Research
Institute (IFPRI) accompanies the program.
Overall, the program include threes distinct cohorts:
• Cohort I launched in August 2018 and ended in October 2021. It achieved its life of project
target training 6,161 coffee farming households in Sembabule District, of which 39% are
female. This cohort has served as a learning cohort to inform the operational design of the
following two larger cohorts. A randomized control trial (RCT) design was piloted among
Cohort I farmers in preparation for the full RCT in Cohort II.
• Cohort II launched in August 2019 in the southwestern districts of Mbarara, Sheema,
Ntungamo, and Bushenyi. Of the 18,686 farmers trained, 43% were female. The RCT is running
in this cohort, which includes 180 treatment and 180 control villages which are spaced at least
1.9km apart across Sheema, Mbarara, and Ntungamo. The control villages and many
intervening villages in these districts will not receive the Farm College program. Bushenyi
District is not required for the RCT, so the usual Farm College training program is implemented
for every coffee village.
• Cohort III will launched in early 2021, delayed due to the Covid-19 pandemic, and aims to train
12,000 coffee households.
UCAT Cohorts I, II and III training program locations
8Training during the Covid-19 pandemic
Between January and late March 2020, UCAT implemented the Coffee Farm College modules for
Cohort I and II as planned. However, soon after the first case of COVID-19 was detected in Uganda on
March 22, 2020, the government instituted a nationwide lockdown and all program activities were
suspended for approximately two months.
While the lockdown was in place, between late March and May, the UCAT provided technical support
to farmers through phone calls and SMS messages. The SMS messages and phone calls proved to be
effective measures for virtually providing technical assistance to farmers. During the phone calls, the
farmer trainers learned about challenges farmers faced with implementing soil nutrition
recommendations, farmers explained they had limited access to the materials and labor required for
composting and found inorganic fertilizers to be expensive.
Some lockdown restrictions were lifted in late May and the team conducted on-farm trainings for
individual farmers between June and September. The program received government permission to
train farmers in small groups of up to five households for the month of October. Finally, additional
COVID-related restrictions were lifted in November and larger gatherings were permitted. This change
permitted the team to conduct trainings with up to 20 households in November and December.
Cohort 1 results
The program successfully completed Cohort I of the Coffee Farm College in Sembabule District in
October 2020. A total of 20 training sessions were held, delivering 14 topics between August 2018 and
October 2020.
A total of 6,161 out of 8,262 of registered households attended at least half of the 14 topics and are
considered “trained”, exceeding the project target of 6,000 trained households. Of the total farmers
trained, 39% were female.
A Best Practice Adoption Endline Survey was conducted by, Laterite, in close collaboration with UCAT’s
field-based evaluation staff. The survey returned to the 600 randomly selected coffee households
assessed at baseline in 2018.
9Cohort 1 household characteristics
10Case Study
11Summary of key results
Key Performance Indicators
Results of Results of
Indicator Definition Target
Dec 2019 Dec 2020
Farming households Number of farming households that
38,000 24,449 27,261
reached register to participate in the project
Number of farming households that
Farming households attend at least half of the Coffee Farm
30,000 18,964 21,771
trained College good agricultural practice
topics (trained)
Number of farming households
2018 Cohort I 6,000 5,318 6,161
trained in Cohort I
Number of farming households
2019 Cohort II 12,000 13,646 15,610
trained in Cohort II
Number of farming households
2020 Cohort III 12,000 N/A N/A
trained in Cohort III
Percent of trained households that
adopt at least half of the taught best 60% N/A 35%
practices on their coffee farms
Adoption rate
Households adopting two or more
additional best practices at endline N/A N/A 48%
compared to baseline
Average yield per tree amongst
trained households increase by 50% in To be To be
Yield increase the harvest one year following 50% measured measured
program cohort, following two years in 2021 in 2021
of support
Farmer Trainers with
Number of Farmer Trainers hired from
mastery of coffee
local communities who have mastered 114 75 75 4
agronomy and
coffee agronomy and training skills 3
training skills
Number of farmer groups organized
for training. Each FFG consists of up to
Focal Farmer Groups
30 farming households and an elected 1,365 845 1,424 6
(FFGs) organized
Focal Farmer and Assistant Focal
Farmer5
Number of demonstration plots, each
Suitable consisting of 40 trees, identified as
demonstration plots sites for delivery of training and 1,365 845 1,424 6
identified demonstration of best agronomic
practices to FFGs
1 Result includes Cohort I and Cohort II registered farmers. The launch of the Cohort III CFC was delayed due to COVID.
2 Result from the Cohort I best practice endline survey.
3 Note this excludes Farmer Trainers hired for control groups.
4 Cohort III FTs were hired in Jan 2021 and will be included in the next narrative report.
5 Note this excludes Focal Farmer Groups organized for the control areas.
6 Includes total number of FFGs formed by late January 2021 for Cohort III (579)
12C. Precision Agriculture for Development (PAD)
Introduction
Precision Agriculture for Development is responsible for the ICT components of the Uganda Coffee
Agronomy Training (UCAT) program and accompanying randomized control trial (RCT). In 2020, PAD
continued monitoring and improving its two-way IVR platform based on push calls and a dynamic IVR
menu to disseminate information on best coffee agricultural practices.
2020 Achievements – “stand-alone” program
Throughout the period of interest, PAD has closely monitored the progress of the stand-alone and
reinforcement groups. In the stand-alone group, farmers only receive information on best coffee
agricultural practices through their phones. In the reinforcement groups, some participants of the
HRNS and TNS training programs receive calls that reinforce the in-person training.
Specifically, PAD monitors (i) how often a farmer picks up the phone when receiving a push call and (ii)
when the farmer answers, how long they stay on the line to listen to the audio recording.
The figure below shows the distribution of the weekly pick-up rate overtime for the period March 2020
– February 2021 for weeks where IVR calls were pushed. With few exceptions, the pick-up rate
followed a relatively constant trend, ranging from 62 to 74%, for an average of 66%. The lower pickup
rates in weeks 1, 11, 12, and 30 reflect network failures that prevented all users from receiving their
push calls. Ignoring these four weeks where technical issues arose, the pick-up rate has been close to
that recorded in 2019, though slightly lower (69% against 72%).
Figure - Weekly pick-up and completion rates
The second figure reports the change in the completion rate over time. The completion rate is defined
as the share of users who listened to the entire message, conditional on having picked up the call. The
completion rate followed a sustainable path over the period of interest, with 64% of users listening to
the entire message on average. Similar to the distribution of the pick-up rate, the few drops in the
completion rates are due to technical issues. The slight reduction observed towards the end of the
year from week 41 to week 45 corresponds to the month of January during which presidential elections
were held, and significant disruptions of the internet network were observed.
2020 achievements – “Reinforcement” group
Farmers in the reinforcement group, who are attending field-based training, receive an ICT-based
intervention also using IVR technology. This sub-sample of farmers attending FFS receives push calls
with recordings reinforcing the material they studied during FFS the month before. These push calls
come in the form of two-minute recordings pushed weekly or monthly to the farmer. The
13reinforcement sample is comprised of approximately half of the farmers from all UCAT treatment
villages. Technoserve has 1,363 farmers and spouses representing 968 households and HRNS has 1,243
farmers and spouses representing 962 households. This represents a total of 2,606 farmers and
spouses or 1,930 households.
HRNS reinforcement farmers' pick-up rate followed a similar trend to that of their stand-alone counter-
parts, ranging from 59% to 71% if one excludes weeks 1, 11, 12 and 30. HRNS farmers receive two to
four push calls per month. In the case of Technoserve, farmers received substantially fewer push calls
once a month.
The average pick-up rate of TechnoServe farmers (80%) is significantly higher than of HRNS (66%). The
14% point gap is mostly due to lower listening fatigue amongst TechnoServe farmers. In terms of
completion rates, 69% of HRNS farmers listened to the entire IVR message on average, with minor
variations over time (Figure 5), while 64% of TechnoServe farmers listened to the full message on
average (Figure 6).
Figure - Reinforcement pick-up rates
Figure - Reinforcement completion rates
14Case Study: Who’s Talking? A/B Test With Varying Narrator Gender to Enhance User Engagement
Design
The objective of this A/B test was to study whether switching from receiving messages voiced by a
narrator who matches the user's gender to messages voiced by a narrator from the opposite gender
affects UCAT stand-alone farmers' engagement with the platform. Farmers were randomly allocated
to three different groups: (i) a control group where the voice of the narrator did not change, (ii) a group
where the IVR voice was switched from not matching to matching the user's gender, and (iii) a group
where the IVR voice was switched from matching to not matching the user's gender. The experiment
ran for eight weeks, starting in October 2020.
Results
This study found that switching the message content from being voiced by a male to being voiced by a
female narrator positively and sustainably increases the probability that female farmers pick up IVR
calls. In contrast, no effect was found on male farmers. Switching from a female to a male narrator
reduced male farmers' listening rate, while the opposite holds when switching from a male to a female
narrator. In the case of female farmers, switching from a male to a female narrator increased the
listening rate.
This study's findings suggested that both male and female UCAT farmers were more sensitive to
messages voiced by a female narrator. Therefore, from the completion of this experiment, only female
narrators were hired to voice new content. In addition to project-based implications, the results of this
experiment also contributed to increase the body of evidence around the impact of narrator gender
on IVR platform user engagement in general. This study’s findings, together with other research
results, were published in a PAD blogpost on whether farmers act differently when they hear a
woman’s voice giving them.
See https://precisionag.org/varying-narrator-gender-to-enhance-user-engagement/
D. International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI): Uganda Coffee Agronomy Training Impact
Evaluation - Randomized Controlled Trial (RCT)
Part of the scientific evidence on the impact of agronomy training on smallholders’ coffee yields is
lacking. The Foundation and its partners are working to improve this through a large-scale, randomized
evaluation of agronomy training implemented by TNS and HRNS and with the ICT of PAD.
RCT activities during 2020 focus on the completion of the baseline report for the RCT cohort, the
preparation and refinement of a pre-analysis plan as well as the continued preparation and refinement
of evaluation protocols, in particular for the measurement of coffee yields.
The Covid-19 pandemic also impacted the RCT and required some adjustment to planned processes
and procedures. In particular, the envisaged RCT midline survey of trained farmers could not be
conducted as a result of lockdown measures and out of health concerns for the survey teams and
participating farmers.
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