Will tea regulations revive ailing sector?

The committee on delegated legislation in the Senate last week approved the Crops, Tea Industry regulations 2019, amid an outcry from farmers over dwindling fortunes.

The tea regulation is aimed at guiding the development and promotion of the tea industry to benefit tea growers and other stakeholders in the industry.

According to the legal notice under the Crops Act 2013, the regulations shall apply with respect to tea produced and marketed in Kenya and imported or exported into and out of Kenya.

“It will provide procedures and conditions for registration of all players along the value chain, provide terms and conditions for the issuance of licences and registration certificates, collection and maintenance of data related to tea,” the documents reads.

"The regulations will also help in authentication and verification of tea exports and imports, promotion of value addition and product diversification of Kenya tea products to target diverse tea markets."

The regulations also state that a person who intends to establish a commercial tea nursery shall apply for a licence from the county government where they intend to establish the tea nursery.

“In addition, a smallholder tea grower shall apply for registration in the tea factory where they deliver green leaf,” the regulation states.

"A tea factory shall maintain a register of all growers who supply green leaf to it and submit a copy of the register to the respective county government and to the authority not later than the fifteenth day of January of every year. A grower shall not sell green leaf to any person other than to the tea factory where they are registered."

Tea grower shall not register their parcel of land planted with tea to more than one tea factory at a time, according to the regulations.

SITUATION ON THE GROUND

Tea factories have been grappling with tea hawking, which had led to a reduction in the amount of green leaf available to some factories.

KTDA chief executive officer Lerionka Tiampati said this has hurt operating capacity and quality of leaf available for processing.

According to a report released by the Agriculture Food Authority — Tea Directorate on Income Stabilisation Mechanism for Smallholder Tea Farmers in Kenya — the average size of tea farm is about 1.2 acres, with a range of 0.05 acres to 15 acres.

“Where farmers own larger sizes of land, tea occupied about 35 per cent of land, leaving the rest for other enterprises. Tea dominates the income sources for households in tea-growing zones, contributing an estimated 70 per cent of household income,” the report stated.

"The significant contribution indicates that smallholder tea farmers are prone to exogenous and endogenous changes that have an effect on tea incomes."

Tea directorate shows that tea reaches a maximum yielding level between 35 and 40 years of age, after which yields start declining. It was established that most of the seedling tea was more than 41 years of age and hence was beyond the maximum yielding age.

“Consequently, yields were already starting to decline as reflected in the national tea productivity trends. The average age of the clonal tea bushes was 33 years and so yields from these were still on an increasing trend,” the report read.

"The other key factors that determined productivity were husbandry practices. including number of plucking per month, influenced largely by growing conditions and cost of labour and fertiliser application rates."

The report recommended replacement of old tea bushes with high-yielding clones, improving husbandry practices, establishing agronomic guidelines to be followed by farmers, as well as government policy interventions on issues of taxation and fertiliser subsidies.

“These interventions need proper timing, targeting and predictability to ensure they effectively contribute towards increasing tea yields,” the report read.