Coffee production in the country is set to increase following spirited efforts by the government through the Ministry of Cooperatives and Small, Micro, and Medium Enterprises to put in place reforms that will motivate farmers to work harder on their farms.
Speaking during a sensitization tour on the cherry advance revolving fund at Kinrou stadium in Meru County, Cooperatives and MSMEs Cabinet Secretary (CS) Simon Chelugui said they have made various changes in the coffee sector that will also ensure that farmers are motivated and reap big from their endeavors.
Coffee production nationally, the CS added, has gone down to about 50 metric tonnes annually from the previous times when Kenya used to produce 140 metric tonnes.
“For us to be heard and be respected, and be able to demand better prices by international buyers we must look at how we will increase production of coffee and thus the reforms,” said Mr Chelugui.
He said farmers’ morale has gone down due to low prices, loss of coffee through theft, and cartels in the value chain this was the reason they came up with resolutions one of them being ensuring the returns are high, especially through the cherry advance revolving fund.
In this regard, the CS said that the government has set aside Sh6.7 billion which will enable the small-scale coffee farmers to sell their coffee at a minimum price of Sh80 per kilogram of coffee delivered at the pulping station.
The new policy, Cherry Advance Revolving Fund (CCARF) with echoes of Guaranteed Minimum Returns (GMR) will be implemented in the 37 coffee-growing counties.
He said the fund will be administered by the New Kenya Planters’ Cooperative Union (KPCU), represented by the Managing Director Timothy Mirugi.
“The Coffee Cherry Advance Revolving Fund was established to provide an affordable, sustainable, and accessible cherry advance to smallholder coffee farmers. These are farmers with land under coffee not exceeding 20 acres,” said Mr Chelugui.
The CS said that they were also introducing reforms to other aspects of the coffee sector including law amendments.
“We are scrapping the retrogressive laws that were extorting farmers and benefiting a few business people to the ones that will be farmers-centred,” said Mr Chelugui adding that the changes will be factored in the cooperatives and the coffee bills before the parliament.
He said the law will not allow anyone to hold more than one license, unlike the past when cartels where a single person was registering as a miller, a broker, and a marketer.
“Those who had milling, marketing, and brokering licenses at a go will have to relinquish two of them and be left with only one.
For millers we have given the county governments the mandate to license them while licensing of marketers and brokers will fall under the Agricultural and Food Authority (AFA),” said Mr Chelugui.
He said the changes in the last four months have seen the prices of coffee go up and in the recent auction, the lowest price was Sh91 per kilo and the highest was Sh190.
To ensure there are no cartels, collusion, interference of prices, or any market influence, the government has also made changes at the Nairobi coffee exchange and put farmers’ representatives.
“We want to breach the gap between private sales and auction sales so that farmers can choose where to go. We don’t want a scenario where private sales are fetching higher prices than the auction for the same coffee,” said Mr Chelugui.
The government is also considering waiving debts held by various cooperatives, to make them take a step forward in production.
In this regard, the CS directed the counties to itemize all the loans held by specific cooperative societies to have a quantum and see whether there is a possibility of wavering everything or partially and the type of loans that will be waived.
“The debts that we are talking about are the monies borrowed to support farmers and due to drought and other shortcomings they were not able to pay, which include fertilizer loans, building factories, buying seedlings among others,” said Mr. Chelugui.
To curb rampant cases of coffee theft while at the factories, the CS assured farmers that all the factories would have 24-hour security cover within the next three months when the harvesting of coffee is ongoing.
He also announced that the distribution of fertilizer to coffee farmers would be through their respective societies and associations to ensure they get it in time.
He called on farmers to get back to their farms assuring government support at every stage of production to increase production.
By Dickson Mwiti
