Coffee brewing giant Nestlé has launched a plan to empower coffee growing households after announcing a Sh23million programme to train farmers.
The programme will reach more than 18,000 coffee farmers for the next three years after a successful first and second phases.
On average, farmers’ co-operative societies recorded a 12 per cent rise in coffee production while quantity of coffee produced per tree by the trainee farmers increased from 2.5 kilos per tree to seven kilos between 2011 and 2018,” Njeru Ng’entu, MD of Nestle East Africa said.
“Those who fully adopted the good agricultural practices recorded a 300 per cent productivity growth from 2.5 kg per tree at inception to 13 kg per tree,” he added.
Thousands of farmers from the first two phases of the Nescafe Plan have adopted the Batian coffee variety which is high yielding and disease resistant, hence the production is likely to more than double in the next three years.
"In this third phase over 5,300 of the new farmers are women who will be trained on growing their coffee in an efficient and sustainable manner,” Ng'entu added.
Nestlé Kenya, through its implementation partner the Coffee Management Services (CMS) Limited, has already identified 12 coffee farmers’ cooperative societies and 24 wet mills to be part of this renewed programme.
