The audit reports of 23 coffee cooperative societies' have been released. The audit was conducted last year, starting August.
Nyeri Agriculture executive James Wachihi said every cooperative has received a report and knows the areas they need to improve on to ensure farmers benefit.
Speaking to the media yesterday, Wachihi said cooperatives are private entities and the county government has no intentions of micro managing them. “But we are asking that all our farmers become more aware so that they can put in place the right leadership and let us ensure that the opportunities that come to us don’t come and pass because we are in a continuous fight,” he said.
The problems facing the societies range from low production, issues of processing occasioned by low efficiency at the wet processing level and poor governance among others, according to the report.
The CEC said each society has its own unique problems and that is why each received a report, so they can address them in their own ways.
“Of course there are challenges that cut across such as production but when it comes to governance, they are unique from one cooperative to another,” he said.
The audit on all coffee cooperative societies was started in August last year and was being done by the national government’s department of cooperative in collaboration with the county government.
The audit was meant to give information on production, sales, rates, employment, farmers’ information, number of coffee trees against the production and age of farmers and trees.
Others include management structure, factory expenses, equipment and financial position of the societies.
The information was meant to assist both the county government and national government in developing a strategy to improve the coffee subsector throughout the value chain.
This followed the selection of Nyeri as a pilot county in coffee revival. Nyeri has about 23 coffee cooperatives societies.
On the involvement of young people in the coffee value chain, he said the government has the intention of starting agriculture clubs called coffee clubs to mentor the youth keen on getting into agribusiness.
The clubs will be started beginning with secondary schools and institutions of tertiary learning.
The county government will ensure they have coffee clubs and showcase how they can make money from coffee farming and value addition in their own small ways.
“We are already enhancing our demo unit at Wambugu ATC and you might be aware that we have a coffee demo unit which has not been in very good shape, but we are rehabilitating it,” he said.
“We are working with stakeholders in the coffee sector to ensure that people can also learn some of the best technologies and methods of doing coffee farming and value addition.”
Poor production has also been blamed on ageing farmers after youths gave the crop a wide berth
