Firm helps Murang'a tea farmers minimise losses, increase harvest

For many decades, tea farmers had been forced to procure loans to tend to their tea farms, eating into their returns.

The farmers, especially the elderly ones, have on many occasions helplessly watched their tea leaves going bad in their farms due to lack of money to have them harvested.

With KTDA paying farmers Sh25 per kilogramme, tea pickers are paid Sh12 per kg of harvested tea and mostly prefer large farms where they can work all week, leaving farmers with smaller farms struggling to harvest their tea.

Many farmers, especially women, have also suffered from chronic illnesses such as arthritis, due to long-term harvesting of tea.

But farmers in Murang’a county have been reprieved after an agent offered to manage their farms at a small fee, helping them to maximise their production and increase their returns.

Agriland Solutions, a firm offering farming solutions and which started recruiting farmers in September last year, has been providing tea pickers and paying them on behalf of the farmer on a weekly basis.

“We are working with both small and large scale farmers. Whether your farm is one acre or four, we will come in and manage it. If you have pickers already, we just take over their payment or add you more if they’re not enough,” CEO Sam Muriru told the Star.

The agent has a team of agronomists that visit individual farms ensuring tea pickers are working as they should and that farms are well maintained.

Further, farms where crops produce low volumes of tea have their soils tested and farmers appropriately advised on what to do to increase harvests.

Those in need of farm inputs such as manure, Muriru said, only have to put in the request and the company sources for them and delivers at a small fee.

Muriru said the tea pickers will have to adhere to the policies of the firm, ensuring they maintain high discipline and stem thefts.

There have been numerous cases of theft of tea leaves both in the farms and in tea buying centres that has been blamed on tea pickers.

“We have a system that tea pickers have to use while selling their tea at the buying centres and it cannot allow one to sell using two different numbers,” he said, explaining that each registered tea farmer has a number issued by their tea factory which they use to sell their produce.

The CEO said most tea farmers have been facing the challenge of debts incurred as they juggle between tending to their farms and supporting their families.

But now, the farmers will have the freedom to diversify their farming activities and earn more income while receiving more returns from their farms.

Farmers, he noted, will only have to pay 7.5 per cent of their proceeds to the company that will be checked off from their monthly payments, with its pilot phase indicating that farm yields have increased by about 50 per cent.

The company has since opened an office in Gatura, Gatanga subcounty, and is currently working with tea farmers from Ngeere, Ikumbi, Makomboki and Njunu tea factories.

“For now, we are managing tea farms but our plans are to extend our services to dairy and coffee farmers,” Muriru said.

Florence Githinji, a benefiting tea farmer, said she has seen major changes in her farm since she joined the company in October last year.

“They have managed my farm well and my production has increased. My tea no longer goes bad in the farm. We are very happy as farmers because we can now focus on other activities,” she said.

Samuel Kirubi, another farmer, said even tea pickers are happy with the new management as they are paid without delays.

Kirubi said previously, he would get money from his dairy returns and plough them into his tea farm, making it difficult to support his family.