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{
    "id": 1472456,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1472456/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 152,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Tigania West, UDA",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. (Dr) John K. Mutunga",
    "speaker": null,
    "content": "good varieties of coffee innovated by our research institutions, good farmers who can produce coffee, and the right climate. I wish to outline the challenges that have been affecting coffee farmers in this country. One of the key challenges that farmers in this country face is that coffee is a low-income earner despite being a high-income crop. Kenyan coffee is of very high quality. It is a preferred commodity across the globe. Kenyan coffee is a specialty crop in most prestigious markets. Delayed payments to farmers is also a challenge. In most cases, the payments are meagre. That is another thing that is affecting the farmers. The other issue is mismanagement of cooperatives through which Kenyan farmers process their coffee. Coffee is initially taken to primary cooperatives where the primary processing or pulping takes place. Another issue facing farmers is lack of direct access to the Nairobi Coffee Exchange. This is the coffee trading platform. Lack of access results in farmers failing to understand exactly what happens there. Therefore, deals cut may negatively impact them. Initially, coffee used to perform very well in this country. Kenya lags behind countries like Ethiopia and Uganda in terms of production and in some cases, productivity. This is productivity in terms of yield per tree, and production in terms of the collective total that we produce. Smallholder farmers who produce 70 per cent of the coffee that we sell suffer poorer productivity and higher production costs compared to estates. It is expensive to produce coffee on small scale. This is mainly due to governance issues in the cooperatives, as I mentioned earlier. The insufficiency of cherry processing which burdens smallholder farmers with higher processing costs is also a challenge. Lack of transparency within the factories themselves and the management contributes to those challenges. Therefore, farmers do not get to know the exact reality about their crop. Coffee productivity in this country is very low. On average, a Kenyan coffee tree gives us two kilogrammes per tree when we have the potential to get 20 kilogrammes per tree or more. On a small-scale level, we can only get two kilogrammes per tree. On a large scale, because we have been able to improve a little bit on the management, we are able to get about four kilogrammes per tree. That is still very little compared to what is possible. We should aim for not less than 20 kilogrammes per tree because it is possible and it is happening right here in Kenya. On the other hand, value addition for coffee has been very low. We are utilising only 30 per cent of the installed capacity to process coffee in this country, which means that we have the capacity to process a lot of coffee, but we are not utilising 70 per cent of it. If you look at milling, which is the removal of parchment from the bean, we are only utilising 13 per cent of the installed capacity while 87 per cent stays idle. Coffee was abandoned by farmers because of the problems that I have highlighted. Value addition is poor. There is no value addition to most of the coffee in this country. As at now, our consumption capacity is at five per cent of the coffee that we produce. That means that we sell 95 per cent of the coffee. This tells you that the low value addition capacity of the country has only been able to turn around 5 per cent which we consume as a country. We sell the rest of the coffee as raw materials for others to process. We export jobs. Hon. Deputy Speaker, we need to embark on processing coffee in this country so as to employ our youth. There are several Government interventions that are noteworthy. The Government of Kenya has set up the Cherry Advance Revolving Fund through the Coffee (General) Regulations, 2019. This Revolving Fund is supposed to stabilise the prices of coffee. As we speak, about Ksh5.2 billion have already been moved to the farmers through payments of at least Ksh80 per kilogramme through the use of this Fund. However, these measures have not significantly turned the sector around as we expected, and so, productivity and production are still low. The electronic version of the Official Hansard Report is for information purposesonly. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor."
}