Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua has convened a three-day conference on coffee reforms in Meru from Thursday.
The June 8-10 summit will bring together key stakeholders in the coffee subsector, including farmers, for deliberations on longterm reforms of reviving the once highly profitable crop.
The Deputy President has said farmers have been neglected for long as middlemen enjoy their sweat.
“Revitalisation of the coffee subsector in Kenya will directly touch the lives of small-holder farmers who for a long time have remained unheard. The philosophy of the Bottom-Up Economic Transformation model envisages restoring dignity to the people at the bottom of the socio-economic pyramid,” he said.
So far, Gachagua has held several and robust engagements with the Parliamentary Caucus on Coffee Reforms. From this engagement, law, policies and regulations for enactment or review have been identified and recommendations made. The conference in Meru will further examine the legal frameworks for collective input.
“We have been exposed to blatant exploitation from all sides. A farmer who produces coffee cannot afford a cup of the same product despite good export market prices. From the coffee summit, we look forward to bitter reforms for the brokers, but sweet benefits for those of us who toil,” Nicholas Mesa, a coffee farmer from Nyamira county, said.
Gachagua has also engaged experts from Ethiopia on good practices on running farmer-centred cooperatives and direct linkage to the consumers in high-value markets like the United States. Some of the emerging practices that will be up for consideration in Meru include capitalising on the distinct flavour and aroma of the Kenyan coffee in marketing, and strengthening cooperatives as key actors to the consumers.
During last month’s visit by the Vice President of Colombia Francia Marquez, the Deputy President and the South American leader explored ways of working together in penetrating high-value markets such as Canada, Belgium and the US.
One of the focus areas of the summit is tightening of the legal frameworks with a view to instituting laws, policies and regulations that will enable farmer-centred structural and systematic long-term interventions for sound coffee reforms.
President William Ruto has tasked the Deputy President to lead public reforms, including in the coffee, tea and milk sub-sectors: the three key areas of focus as the Kenya Kwanza administration rolls out programmes to revamp the agriculture sector.
