Kiambu County has the largest land size under coffee in Kenya, making it the top producer of cherries in the country.
This comes even as acres of arable farming land in the county are rapidly being subdivided to pave the way for better-earning real estate, threatening the production of food and cash crops such as tea and coffee. Kiambu, which is the country’s most populous county only behind the capital Nairobi, had some 20,369 hectares of land under coffee by June 2022, according to data from the Ministry of Agriculture.
This is more than double the size of land under coffee bushes in its closest competitor, Kirinyaga County, whose farmers have planted coffee on 10,089 hectares.
Nyeri, Murang’a, and Meru close the top five growers with 9,841 hectares, 9,413 hectares, and 8,708.4 hectares of land under coffee respectively.
Other top growers are Machakos (8,013 hectares), Bungoma (7,725 hectares), Embu (6,881 hectares), Kericho (4,842 hectares) and Kisii (4,579 hectares).
Kiambu is the largest grower of coffee in Kenya. In the year to June 2022, it produced 10.63 million kilogrammes of cherries. It was followed by Kirinyaga which produced 8.77 million kilogrammes and Nyeri, whose output stood at 6.82 million kilogrammes.
Coffee has been a major cash crop in the country for decades, but its production has dwindled significantly as poor earnings have forced farmers to switch to more lucrative alternatives.
According to the Ministry, some 33 out of the 47 counties grow the lucrative cash crop on 109,384 hectares of land. This is a significant decline from a peak of 153,030ha under the crop in 1988.
Further, coffee yields per hectare have also declined sharply. In 1988, farmers were making an average of 842 kilogrammes per hectare. This has since reduced to just 474 kilogrammes per hectare.
