It is your choice to uproot your tea bushers or not, the Kenya Tea Development Authority has told farmers.
KTDA boss Lerionka Tiampati yesterday said that farmers could turn to alternative crops if tea was not profitable to them.
"We have no say over what farmers want to do with their tea bushes. They are overall owners of the plants," he said.
The remarks come after a rise in social and mainstream media reports of farmers across the country uprooting tea bushes.
Tiampati said one bad year for the tea sector should not make farmers panic.
"Tea industry performance is cyclic, one year can be bad and the other can be good," the CEO said.
He spoke during a media briefing on the 2018-19 financial year bonus payment to smallscale tea farmers in the country.
Tiampati said KTDA managed factories have earned a total of Sh69.77 billion from tea sales for the year ended June 2019. Farmers will receive an average of Sh41.27 per kilo of green leaf delivered.
The payout, Tiampati said, represents an average return of 67 per cent of the total tea revenue.
He said the performance has been realised despite most of the tea-producing countries increasing production and importing markets experiencing political and economic challenges.
“Due to the above factors, the current performance is 18 per cent below last year’s performance when the factories earned Sh85.74 billion.
“Out of the Sh69.77 billion revenues, farmers will receive a total of Sh46.45 billion being the total of Sh17.69 billion in the initial monthly payment and 28.76 billion as second and final payment,” he said.
