Coffee producers seek to market crop from counties

A farmer spreads out coffee beans to dry. The Kenya Coffee Producers Association has stepped up recruitment of growers. Photo/Charles Wanyoro  NATION MEDIA GROUP

By MUTHINI STEPHEN

In Summary

• The Kenya Coffee Producers Association is recruiting small and medium coffee estates to build the clout needed to start marketing coffee from the counties
• The association says marketing the crop from its area of origin would reduce transport costs and theft while on transit while giving the producers a unique identity in the market

The Kenya Coffee Producers Association is recruiting small and medium coffee estates to build the clout needed to start marketing coffee from the counties.

The association says marketing the crop from its area of origin would reduce transport costs and theft while on transit while giving the producers a unique identity in the market.

“It is high time we brought on board small and medium estates. We strongly feel that coffee should be marketed at the counties,” said KCPA chief executive officer Danis Owili during a recruitment drive in Nyeri at the weekend.

Mr Owili said returns to farmers were currently undermined by bureaucracy, with about 170 marketers registered by the Coffee board of Kenya (CBK) while only 30 were active at the Nairobi Coffee Exchange. One per cent of proceeds from coffee goes to the exchange.

KCPA chairman Michael Gitau said farmers should take ownership of the produce.

“The starting point is to have farmers establish their own mill and then they can market their coffee even through their website," said Mr Gitau.

He said some coffee farmers in Murang’a County had started reaping the benefits of packaging their coffee in 100 grammes packets which were retailing at Sh100 per packet, encouraging local sales.

He said counties should have a baseline count of the number of coffee bushes under cultivation so as to make it easy for marketers and financiers to work out the correct production potential.

At the same time, the Co-operative Bank said it was working with farmers in the counties by offering loans in order to increase production.

The bank’s relations manager Mr Patrick Muchiri, said they had started with societies and now they were looping in the estates in their plans.

Mr Muchiri said they were giving cherry advance loans; farm input loan and working capital at an interest rate of five per cent per annum on reducing balance.

The interest rate, he said, would reduce to 2.5 per cent per annum after the first six months of servicing the loan.