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Yesterday, I was in Kassanda meeting coffee farmers and honestly, I left the gardens with a heavy heart. You could see how badly the prolonged dry season had hit their coffee but what hurt me most was listening to the farmers talk about what they are losing. I could see the pain in their faces and for some even tears in their eyes. These are people who invested their savings, labour and years of waiting into coffee only to watch the weather put everything at risk. Climate change is no longer a discussion for the future. It is happening in our coffee gardens today. But as I walked through those gardens, I kept asking myself: Where are the subsidised irrigation systems? What climate adaptation projects are actually reaching these farmers? How many farmers can afford to buy irrigation equipment or access bank credit at the current cost of borrowing? We cannot keep telling farmers to adapt when we haven’t made adaptation affordable and accessible to them. Sometimes I wonder whether we are talking about climate change in the wrong places. We cannot keep holding climate change conferences in expensive hotels, producing beautiful reports and making powerful commitments while the farmer who is supposed to benefit from all these conversations is standing in a dry coffee garden wondering what they will harvest. Climate solutions must leave the conference rooms and reach the villages. They must reach Kassanda, reach the coffee garden and reach the farmer. And this is not just about one farmer. Uganda is losing enormous potential income from these changing weather patterns and Uganda as a whole is at risk. We can talk about the ambition of reaching 20 million bags of coffee but how do we get there if the farmers producing the coffee are struggling to keep their trees alive? We need action now affordable irrigation, water harvesting, climate-smart technologies, resilient coffee varieties, stronger extension services and financing designed around the realities of smallholder farmers. Government, development partners, financial institutions, researchers and the private sector must move beyond commitments and put resources where the problem actually is: in the farmers’ gardens. Because yesterday in Kassanda, I didn’t see climate change in a PowerPoint presentation. I saw it in the coffee trees. I saw it in the farmers’ faces. And I saw it in their tears. Let’s stop talking about climate solutions only in hotels. Let’s take them to the farmer. For God and my country