For the last two years, the 56-year-old farmer has not harvested a single coffee berry from his 700-tree coffee farm, leaving him listless and disgruntled.

Bad weather destroyed his mild Arabica crop -- first a drought in 1996, then heavy rains linked to El Nino in late 1997 and early 1998.

But bad weather is not the only reason Mbowe's coffee farm has suffered. Poverty prevents him from buying necessary supplies such as pesticides and seedlings to replace the ageing trees.

``Our problem is pesticides. We have no money to buy medicine for our crop or even new seedlings,'' Mbowe told Reuters.

``We survive on bananas,'' adds Mbowe. ``And what will happen to the coffee? There is nothing to do. We are just going to leave them to die.''

Production was already dwindling before bad weather ruined his crop.

Tenyears ago Mbowe was harvesting around 30 bags of 50-kg parchment coffee or 1,500 kg of coffee.

Liberalisation of the coffee sector in 1994 meant the government stopped fixing prices and allowed private coffee buyers to compete with co-operative unions for coffee bought direct from the farmer.

It also meant the government stopped supplying farm inputs on a credit basis and allowed the private sector to trade inputs.

The new coffee policy led to more prompt payments for farmers but output fell.

National production has averaged 50,000 tonnes in the last 20 years but fell to an all-time low of 38,000 tonnes last season.

``Liberalisation was meant to increase the farmers' income, but the reality is that production has gone down, so that even if you pay high prices, income earned is very little,'' an agricultural researcher at Tanzania's Sokoine University of Agriculture, Joseph Tesha, told Reuters.

Seventy-six year old Elia Kahama says that before liberalisation, he harvested 18 bags of 50-kgparchment coffee or 900 kg from his farm of 400 trees.

Last year he harvested 66 kg and in the 1998-99 (Oct/Sept) season, he expects to reap just four to six bags.

``We used to to get coffee pesticide on credit. Then in 1994, when we were told we have to buy our own medicine, the farms started to get destroyed. Before that the farm was full of coffee,'' Kahama added. In Kilimanjaro, home of Tanzania's high quality mild Arabica coffee, production sank to an all-time low of 3,653 tonnes in the 1997-98 season from a peak of 26,000 tonnes.

But liberalisation, once seen as an answer to Tanzania's coffee woes, is not the only problem facing the country's farmers.

By far the greatest challenge for the industry is increasing yields per hectare, particularly among smallholders.

Tanzania's smallholder farmers account for 95 per cent of the country's total output and yet they have the lowest yields in the region.

Their output is estimated at 170 kg per hectare compared to Kenya's 700 kg per hectare and 600to 650 kg per hectare in Burundi and Rwanda.

``The problem with Tanzania coffee is not the prices. Compared to Latin America or even Colombia, we are doing well. Our problem is production (per hectare),'' managing director of Africa Coffee Company, Jeremy Lefroy, said.

Other contributing factors to poor production include outdated farming methods, a lack of central pulperies and the high labour input needed for Arabica coffee. Mbowe acknowledged that he was partly to blame for the decline in his farm's productivity.

``I got discouraged because I was not able to get chemicals.'' Why bother, he said, Africa's highest mountain towering above his farm.

Hope lies in an ambitious Tanzanian government programme aimed at reviving the industry and doubling coffee production in three to five years. The plan involves distributing seedlings to farmers. Already 10 million seedlings have been distributed and the Tanzania Coffee Board intends to distribute 10 million seedlings each year over the next threeyears.

``If I get just 400 seedlings, I know I can get 50 bags of coffee,'' Mbowe said.