•Tuesday, December 19, 2006
small scale coffee farmers in kenya are getting their backpack and pump sprayers ready to tend their arabica and robusta coffee bushes. the neglected leading kenyan cash crop export till the late eighties and early nighties has turned to be a gem! during that period, kenyan coffee prices took a nose-dive and the crop lost its lucrative payments.
a bulk of kenya coffee is the arabica type, a high quality used by roasters to blend other world coffee. unfortunately it has been controlled by a local cartel called kpcu and an alleged international cartel in germany. these two has ensured that farmers get a poor bargain for their sweat.
many farmers ended up uprooting the crop, burnt it for charcoal, cut it down for building rafts and trimmed it to give way for subsistence farming. yet there are those who struggled with the hard years, tendering their green oil, trusting and hoping there will be a time when their hard work would be fruitful.
along the way, there were hopes of better coffee when the kshs 500m export stabilisation (stabex) fund was invented and distributed. but the effects of this fund never got the coffee industry up its feet since it was diverted for other political urgencies. then came the tussle of tetu coffee marketing company which promised heaven to farmers who barely earned a kenya shilling from a kilogram of their berries.
tetu coffee plc promised 50 shillings per kilo of coffee berries with 50 per cent being paid upfront on delivery and the other half once the sale is done. this plan never got the coffee tree to bulge again under the weight of its fruit. it generated controversy and tetu coffee never saw the light of day. maybe afterwards through shady deals. the bone of contention was their demand for exclusive rights in marketing kenyan coffee and that they get to deal with the farmer directly not through kpcu or the coffee auction.
now, small scale coffee farmers are back to their farms and are tending their bushes religiously. this is as a result of the good prices their coffee is fetching in the market. they are being paid between 24 and 33 shillings for a kilo of coffee delivered; a great leap from the less than one shilling the product attracted over 10 years ago. what is precipitating this rise in coffee prices? that, i am yet to know.
some info on stabex fund
some info on tetu coffee plc
a bulk of kenya coffee is the arabica type, a high quality used by roasters to blend other world coffee. unfortunately it has been controlled by a local cartel called kpcu and an alleged international cartel in germany. these two has ensured that farmers get a poor bargain for their sweat.
many farmers ended up uprooting the crop, burnt it for charcoal, cut it down for building rafts and trimmed it to give way for subsistence farming. yet there are those who struggled with the hard years, tendering their green oil, trusting and hoping there will be a time when their hard work would be fruitful.
along the way, there were hopes of better coffee when the kshs 500m export stabilisation (stabex) fund was invented and distributed. but the effects of this fund never got the coffee industry up its feet since it was diverted for other political urgencies. then came the tussle of tetu coffee marketing company which promised heaven to farmers who barely earned a kenya shilling from a kilogram of their berries.
tetu coffee plc promised 50 shillings per kilo of coffee berries with 50 per cent being paid upfront on delivery and the other half once the sale is done. this plan never got the coffee tree to bulge again under the weight of its fruit. it generated controversy and tetu coffee never saw the light of day. maybe afterwards through shady deals. the bone of contention was their demand for exclusive rights in marketing kenyan coffee and that they get to deal with the farmer directly not through kpcu or the coffee auction.
now, small scale coffee farmers are back to their farms and are tending their bushes religiously. this is as a result of the good prices their coffee is fetching in the market. they are being paid between 24 and 33 shillings for a kilo of coffee delivered; a great leap from the less than one shilling the product attracted over 10 years ago. what is precipitating this rise in coffee prices? that, i am yet to know.
some info on stabex fund
some info on tetu coffee plc
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