Economy

Team seeks return to controlled coffee milling, marketing

coffee

A farmer tends her coffee crop at Githiru village in Nyeri county last year. A taskforce has proposed that coffee from co-operatives and large estates be milled and marketed together. FILE

A taskforce appointed to chart the future of coffee farming in Nyeri County has recommended a return to controlled milling and marketing saying liberalisation had shortchanged farmers.

The taskforce proposes that coffee from co-operatives and large estates be milled and marketed together, giving farmers bargaining clout for the end product as well as inputs.

A Bill seeking to turn the proposals into law is being prepared for introduction into the County Assembly. The taskforce was appointed by governor Nderitu Gachagua in May.

“We want coffee from this county to follow a certain course. Ethiopia’s coffee is six times more than ours and it is marketed through three unions,” county commissioner for co-operatives James Ikiara said. The recommendations, if turned into law, would see mergers between the often polarised co-operative unions.

“Decisions on whether to merge will eventually come from you. However, in future there will be no choice but to form a society as a law will be put in place to that effect,” county coffee officer Charles Nyamweya told estate owners during a briefing on the report at Nyeri YMCA Hall.

The report proposes that all coffee from the county be milled at the Kenya Planters Co-operative Union factory in Sagana and that a dry mill owned by Othaya Farmers’ Co-operative Society be expanded at a cost of Sh8 million to process coffee from outside the county.

Kenya Co-operative Coffee Mills, a sister of Kenya Co-operative Coffee Exporters Limited (KCCE), has leased the KPCU facility. KCCE was formed three years ago under the direction of former Co-operatives minister Joseph Nyaga to wrest coffee marketing from the grip of multi-national firms.

Mr Ikiara said farmers could earn up to Sh6 billion, three times their present annual income, from the 12 million coffee trees in the county.

Niche

The report envisions Nyeri replicating a marketing model used by Rwanda where speciality coffees are produced for niche markets, but estate owners are sceptical of the plan.

“In this era of liberalisation you cannot restrict farmers to a single miller or a marketing agent. The taskforce should have concentrated on restoring high production before thinking of the market,” said Mr Benson Gichohi, an estate farmer from Mukurweini.

Mr Gichohi said that this could be done through ensuring that there are enough extension officers to serve farmers. Only 50 officers serve the county’s 98,000 farmers presently.

Most of the 155 registered coffee estates in the county came about after the split of co-operative societies more than 10 years ago. Farmers with a minimum of five acres sought registration as estates to escape from the politics of co-operative societies.

“We left the societies because of farmers who had very little stake in the industry making trouble,” said Edward Kariuki from Mehoka Estate in Othaya.

Some estates are already marketing their coffee through direct sales and see no benefits of forming unions with smaller growers.

[email protected]