Save the coffee sector

It is ironical that at a time when appetite for Kenyan coffee internationally is on the rise, cultivation of the crop is falling at an alarming rate.

Farmers are turning to other crops or using their land for more commercially viable purposes because of exorbitant production costs associated with the crop and low returns.

Another reason is the miserable earnings that reach the farmers despite high prices the crop fetches in international markets.

Currently, prices have risen to a record Sh35.20 per kilogramme of processed coffee. However, most of the growers live in squalor because brokers and statutory deductions siphon away a huge chunk of their profits. This is the scenario that has contributed to the slow death of the sub-sector.

Reports that coffee production has plunged from a record 130,000 tonnes in the 1987/88 season to 54,000 tonnes is worrying and should force the authorities into action to save the sector.

Research institutions

In a number of regions, particularly in Central Province and around Nairobi and parts of the Mount Kenya region, where most of the crop is grown, land previously under coffee cultivation is now utilised for more profitable ventures, such as dairy farming or real estate. As a result, coffee production has fallen by nearly 90 per cent. This is not acceptable in a country that has invested billions of shillings in research institutions and marketing of the crop.

The Government must, as matter of urgency, through the Ministry of Agriculture and other relevant agencies, come up with a policy that will encourage renewed interest in the cultivation of the crop. Otherwise, the recent announcement by the Coffee Board of Kenya to brand and market locally produced coffee will be rendered irrelevant.

The Government should reverse the negative trend through creation of an enabling environment that will once more excite farmers and investors. Maybe it is time the mandates of some of the state-funded bodies such as the Ruiru-based Coffee Research Foundation, the Coffee Board of Kenya and Coffee Development Fund were reviewed.

For now, they can only be viewed as mere parasites living on the sweat of coffee farmers.