A researcher has partnered with a Kenya Tea Development Agency official to train farmers on better coffee husbandry with an aim of increasing production in Othaya, Nyeri.
Benard Gichimu a researcher with a bias in coffee farming and improvement and KTDA Company secretary Patrick Ngunjiri said in the 1980s, Othaya was at its peak when 19 wet factories affiliated to the giant Othaya Farmers Cooperative Society, produced over 19 million kilos.
But the production reduced to 9 million in the 1990s culminating into a low of about 1.7 million in the last one year.
They spoke at Stefano hotel in Othaya on Saturday when they met coffee farmers’ representatives to plan on how to start the coffee revitalisation programme.
Ngunjiri said this means the average production of coffee in Othaya per bush in a year is less than two kilos which is below par.
This, he said, means there are many unattended acres of land under coffee, adding that they will be coming up with a new incentive to bring many farmers back to the coffee farms.
Ngunjiri attributed the decline in production to poor payment and bad leadership in societies that led to farmers abandoning coffee farming.
“Farmers have appreciated that coffee is black gold and therefore there is a need to make very targeted, calculated and very deliberate efforts to bring our farmers back,” he said.
“We want to bring everybody to the farm, the young people, women and men, because the future of this country will be determined by these groups of people, especially the young people and women.”
He said they have come up with a cogent plan to be rolled out at the beginning of next year, to ensure every household with over 1,000 bushes earns over Sh1 million from coffee through improvement of both coffee quality and quantity.
Gichimu said it is estimated that Othaya has 1.2 coffee trees producing an average of less than two kilos of coffee per tree per year, while the same should produce over 40 kilos.
He said all these bushes are capable of producing up to 12 million kilos if they are revitalised so that a tree can produce at least 10 kilos per year.
He said Othaya farmers can earn more than Sh 1.2 billion if the coffee is sold at the current prices of about Sh100 per kilo.
The revitalisation will be realised by training farmers on proper coffee husbandry through initiating model farms distributed in all coffee growing areas in Othaya. They will establish about 100 model farms.
The model farms will be used to train farmers on the best practices of coffee production so that they are able to reach a production of at least 20 kilos per tree.
The model farms will be training sites used to reach out to other farmers neighbouring them.
Charles Muriithi from Rukira coffee factory who attended the meeting applauded the initiative saying it will help him improve production from five kilos per tree to over ten which will translate to more earnings.
-Edited by SKanyara
