Coffee farmers to access new fertiliser via mobile app

ETG County Director Lewis Giles (L) with the firm’s North Rift Marketing Manager Peter Tallam during a farmers’ field day in Moiben, Uasin Gishu County in October last year.

NAIROBI, KENYA: A local commodities firm has launched a new fertiliser variety specifically targeted at boosting coffee production in Kenya.

Export Trading Group Country Director Lewis Giles says the new coffee fertiliser variety, with “a lot of nutrients”, will help increase coffee yields in the country, thereby bettering the country’s foreign exchange earnings.

Addressing farmers during the Coffee Trade Fair at the Coffee Research Institute in Ruiru on Friday, Mr Giles said the fertiliser variety had already been successfully tested in Spain.

“The drive behind the introduction of the high quality fertiliser is to help Kenya regain its top rank as one of the world’s top producing coffee countries,” he said.

Giles noted that farmers would be able to access the fertiliser through their mobile fertiliser application, known as ETG Mobile App, as well as through agronomists who are spread across the country.

The County Director says if farmers in Kenya can access the critical ingredient, then its application to their farms during planting and top-dressing would increase, ultimately making the country produce more.

According to the app’s Manager Job Oyoo, farmers using the new mobile technology can tell which brands of fertilisers are available in the market and at what price. Importantly, using their mobile phones, farmers can also locate the nearest point where they can purchase the input.

Wilson Macharia, a coffee farmer in Murang’a, says the coming of the coffee-specific fertiliser is a huge relief to them.

“Our yields have been going down. The quality of the berries had also deteriorated and this impacted negatively on the income we got from our produce,” he said.

The coming of new fertiliser variety for coffee comes few months after Export Trading Group announced that it was commissioning a fertiliser blending plant, one of the most modern in East Africa, in Mombasa, a move analysts expect would help tame high prices of the farm input and address perpetual food shortages in the country.

Giles says the blending plant that is fully computerised produces soil-specific, crop-specific brands of fertilisers.?

"For a long time, farmers have been using fertilisers that do not address the specific needs of their soils. With this new technology, however, fertilisers will be produced depending on the nutrients needs of different soils in different areas," said Giles.