It is important to collect such information since any management and technology that can be scaled-up to improve coffee production has to be implemented by small scale growers. There are many ecosystem services that are delivered in agricultural landscapes and pollination service is one of them. It may be difficult for farmers to invest in the conservation of ecosystem services without knowing and being convinced of their importance. Farmers can not consider managing their lands for the conservation of ecosystem services delivered by pollinator biodiversity if they are not aware or convinced of the importance of these services for their livelihoods. In Sub-Saharan Africa and in Uganda, farmers’ perceptions and awareness about the role of pollinators in coffee production remain largely un-documented. Yet, such information is necessary for developing suitable management plans to conserve agro-ecosystems and services delivered in and from these agro-ecosystems for coffee productivity stability and improvement.
Information about indigenous knowledge’s and perceptions of pollination services is necessary to be incorporated in the design of management strategies for increasing and maintaining pollination services for the stability of the yield of coffee and other pollinator-dependent crops and for on-farm biodiversity conservation . Pollination is a service nature provides that is mostly taken for granted, and very little is done to improve or maintain this natural service . However, pollination is an ecosystem service that is key to food security . Pollinators are essential for many vegetable,blueberry grow pot fruit and seed based crops including coffee that are grown in Uganda and in Sub-Sahara Africa.For pollen-limited crops, promoting polli-nation services is a mean of increasing their productivity without resorting to expensive agricultural inputs such as pesticides and herbicides. Indeed, pollination services are most likely underpinning productivity in many Sub- Saharan grown crops without farmers even recognizing it .
Globally, the contribution of pollinators for increasing genetic diversity, adaptation, seed set or crop production, crop quality and natural regeneration of wild and cultivated crops species has been highlighted and the need to conserve pollinators has been stressed worldwide.Yet the public’ knowledge of the role of pollinators re-mains poorly documented or not documented at all, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa including Uganda, where farmers grow crops with high degree of vulnerability to future pollinators decline . Conducting an interview survey seems to be an important step in information generation for policy-makers concerned with issues related to conciliate on-farm pollinator biodiversity conservation and promotion of agriculture modernization that is aiming at increasing agriculture production and thereby increasing household annual income and employment opportunity of the farmers. Hence, the relevance of assessing specific knowledge by farmers on pollinator importance for coffee crop yields increase, agriculture, wild biodiversity and agro- biodiversity conservation. The understanding of farmers’ perceptions of pollinator importance in coffee production can help in developing strategies to reduce on the negative attitudes and influence the change of attitudes and opinions towards the adoption of environmentally friendly farming practices by farmers.
The objective of this study was to document farmers’ knowledge and perceptions of the importance of ecosystem services delivered in farmlands and of pollinators for coffee yield increase and stability. It was hypothesized that “small-scale coffee growers were not aware of coffee pollinators and perceive these as not important in coffee production because “granted by the nature”. Be-cause most managers of coffee farms are aged male farmers, and that female farmers play a secondary role, it was therefore hypothesized that the knowledge of pollination by farmers would be linked to the gender and age of the farmer. Since most coffee growers have small land area, it was expected that the size of the coffee farm would influence the knowledge of pollination.