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{
    "id": 1088274,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1088274/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 163,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. Ndwiga",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 278,
        "legal_name": "Peter Njeru Ndwiga",
        "slug": "peter-ndwiga"
    },
    "content": "That is to the extent that you talk to roasters all over the world and they will be telling you Kenyan coffee is not available. Yes, it is true it is not available because these fellows have their own markets. So, coffee never ends up at the exchange. If it gets there, they also know who is going to buy the coffee and at what price. Coffee has so many grades by the time it leaves a miller. All these grades if you go to the coffee exchange double A of Kenya coffee will be costing so much and AB, PB and all those grades. Madam Deputy Speaker, if you go to Mombasa when our coffee is being exported in those bags, you do not see those grades because the coffee has been bought. These people manipulate using the grading system to the extent that if they buy Kenyan coffee top grade at whatever price, then they fit prices for the lower grades. After they have done that, they bank all the coffee into one container. The same coffee you go to Europe and other place--- I am a witness to that. The coffee that you find in Starbucks and some places in Europe labelled Kenya Double A is not Kenya Double A. It is a mixture of all grades and they are selling it there at premium prices but the farmer was paid a pittance. This Bill intends to cure that problem. We are also encouraging local value addition of coffee. Those of us who remember in the olden days - In fact not very old, up to the early 1980s, we used to have affordable Kenyan coffee in our shops. We used to have such brands as Kahawa Ngoma, Kahawa No. 1, KK Kahawa and also another coffee called 20 Cents Coffee. This meant that every household could afford to buy and consume coffee. Madam Deputy Speaker, part of the problem that we have got in this country is that we produce things which we do not consume. The reason we do not consume what we produce here is by the time the coffee has left the farmer, they cannot afford to get it from the shops. If you go to the supermarkets today, the coffee you find there are out of reach for ordinary Kenyans. This is because we have given the coffee that we ought to have processed which we could consume here. We have given that to these hyenas who take our coffee out there. We are proposing and we hope that the Cabinet Secretary (CS) is listening - We want to encourage local value addition of our coffee so that we can have Kenyans consuming their own coffee. We stopped producing coffee here because that was an initiative of the then coffee. The reason why that stopped is because on that board there, instead of farmers’ representative and people who had an interest and passion for growing and expanding Kenyan coffee, we appointed coffee traders. Madam Deputy Speaker, these fellows when they went there to the Coffee Board of Kenya instead of following the coffee value addition of lower grade coffees which were not fetching high or premium prices at the exchange, they became traders themselves. If you see the roasting plant which was owned by the farmers in Industrial Area here which eventually was closed and ransacked by I do not know who, you see that plant then you begin to understand where the rain started to hit us in the coffee sector. It is our hope and aspiration that through this Bill, we are going to cure that problem. That we will have a coffee board that is responsive to the interest of coffee growing in this country. Having said that, I would want also to advise the CS in charge of the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries in this Republic that at the moment, the Government"
}