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{
    "id": 1213708,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1213708/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 79,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Dagoretti South, UDA",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. John Kiarie",
    "speaker": null,
    "content": "Coffee should be seen as gold in this country. Coffee is the heritage of this country. When you go out there, you are told of how high the quality of Kenyan coffee is. It is so high that it is not even used in its raw form. It is used as a blend for coffees from around the world. The blood, sweat and tears of farmers have gone unrewarded for over 60 years. This is because this was a colonial crop. The new Africans who took power after the colonialists left wanted to be black colonialists. They wanted to be a black white man. They perpetrated the laws, rules and all the things that were governing the coffee sector. Today as we speak, coffee in Kenya has not moved an inch from where the colonialists left us in terms of its development and enterprise. In fact, it is worse off. When you go to the county where the constituency I represent is hived from - our constituency was hived off Kiambu County in 1969 - you will find that it has got to a point where farmers are opting to uproot coffee to put up apartments so that they can get rent. They do not have any commercial meaning of the beans they harvest. What we are doing here this afternoon is righting the wrongs perpetrated by people who are supposed to be superintending the sector. If there is any important business that this House will conduct is righting the wrongs by supporting the annulment of these coffee regulations in their entirety. We shall be curing a big mischief occasioned by people who, in the first place, should have been curing it. The coffee farmer out there is keen to see if the new administration is concerned about the planter of coffee. The likes of Starbucks Corporation process and brand the coffee taken in New York and other places. They want to get a benefit out of it. One way of making sure the farmer gets benefit is by first getting the policies, legislation and regulations that govern this sector right. The coffee industry needs to rower back into life. It cannot do that if we do not get the regulations, policies and legislations right. I support the annulment in its entirety. Thank you, Hon. Deputy Speaker."
}