Climate changes associated with higher temperatures, droughts and changes in rainfall patterns is a huge threat to the lives of coffee communities across the globe, including in Uganda. The use of agroforestry (AF) practices, i.e. planting of shade trees on coffee farms, is one of the recommend nature-based strategies against climate change. However, despite the widely known benefits of AF, only a small share of the world’s coffee production comes from this kind of shaded production systems. Why is this? This paradox is central in the research project “The Agroforestry Paradox –Climate Clever Coffee” (APCCO), which looks to uncover the biophysical interactions, local ecological knowledge and socioeconomics behind on-farm decisions relating to coffee-AFS and climate change. The project focuses on Robusta coffee, which is the commercially most important coffee species in Uganda, but has been partly neglected in coffee research.

The APCCO project is funded by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark and administered by Danida Fellowship Centre under the grant no. 23-06-KU. The project comprises a strong group of partners, incl. Makerere University (MAK)-Uganda, the University of Copenhagen, National
Coffee Research Institute Uganda (NaCORI), Mukono Zonal Agricultural Research and Development Institute (MuZARD), CURAD Incubator, GrowGrounds, NewForesight, and Regen Farmer. Through interdisciplinary efforts, APCCO will collect data among coffee farmers and oncoffee farms, and funnel new knowledge into digitalized farm simulators (so-called ‘digital twins’)
of local coffee AF systems. These digital tools will enable the modelling of different scenarios for agroforestry development specific to the Ugandan environment. Ecosystems services, such as carbon sequestration and production of coffee and tree crops, will also be modelled, optimized and used to fine-tune current AF practices. Supplemented with assessments of farmers’ livelihoods, we aim to document and improve the living income of farmers. Using a ‘living lab’, where actors in the Uganda coffee sector will co-create and test new business models, APCCO will also develop integrated business models for coffee and ecosystem services.