Uganda is as much the birthplace to coffee as Ethiopia, the origin of both the robusta and eugenioides species, among others. Still the largest grower of robusta in Africa, it is the eighth largest coffee exporting country in the world. The introduction of arabica can be traced to the early 1900s, long after the establishment of arabica coffee plantations in the Americas, simultaneously being brought in by the government and by the catholic church as a cash crop. By 1914, European and Asian investors owned 135 plantations across Uganda for a total of 58.000 acres of land, but abandoned the crop when prices crashed, leaving cultivation to smallholders.  Now there are very few monocrop plantations, with only an estimated 5% of coffee grown on estates. Roughly 1.7 million households grow coffee on less than 1 acre of land, growing a mix of coffee, bananas and beans– this combination yielding nearly identical results of coffee cherry making it a far more suitable path for smallholders. Amongst the growing specialty market, arabica remains the minority of coffee production in Uganda, comprising only about 20% of the export.