Salient issues coffee forum must address to benefit small-scale farmers

Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua recently announced that the much-anticipated coffee stakeholders’ conference will take place next month.

Given that the future of more than 800,000 smallholder coffee farmers in Kenya is at stake, the conference must come up with concrete, actionable solutions to the myriad challenges facing the Kenyan coffee farmer.

Fortunately, the Deputy President, who is also the convenor of the forum, has placed the farmer high on his agenda for a better future for the coffee industry, thus setting the tempo for the upcoming conference to focus on the real issues afflicting small-scale coffee producers.

For this reason, the organisers need to ensure that farmers are well-represented.

In my view as a citizen who also dabbles in coffee farming, the forum must comprehensively address and resolve the following three salient but intertwined issues.

Sustainable livelihood

First, how do we empower our farmers to earn a decent, sustainable livelihood from growing coffee?

This ought to be the single most important agenda at the conference, with everything else revolving around the question of how we should transform small-scale coffee farming in Kenya into a profitable but sustainable source of wealth for the millions of Kenyans who rely on it for a livelihood.

While pushing for farmers to be paid more for their crop is certainly crucial, there is an urgent need to de-escalate the high cost of labour and inputs like fertilisers and pesticides, as the first step towards sustainability.

Many poor coffee farmers are perpetually trapped in a vicious cycle of financial debt as they struggle to keep their farm operations afloat in the face of escalating expenses. How do we liberate them?

The cost of producing a kilogram of clean coffee in Kenya is estimated at between Sh80 and Sh100. Even after taking into account the fact that farmers have been receiving significantly higher prices for their produce in recent years, in some cases as high as Sh120 per kilogram, the galloping cost of production gobbles up all the income and profits, leaving farmers a highly indebted lot.

With a 50-kilogram bag of fertiliser retailing at between Sh4,000 and Sh7,000, and the cost of labour at Sh500 per worker per day, the little margins the poor farmer hoped to survive on are completely eroded.

The production cost needs to fall to below Sh50 in order to free enough money to service loans, pay school fees and other personal bills, and importantly, re-invest on the coffee farms.

The second issue is: how do we improve the quality and yields of the coffee produced by smallholder farmers?

Improving coffee productivity is imperative to sustainability.

According to Solidaridad, an international NGO that supports the coffee industry, smallholder farmers in Kenya produce two to three kilograms of cherry per tree against a potential of over 30 kilograms.

Sub-optimal performance

This sub-optimal performance is denying our farmers the full economic benefits of one of the world’s most lucrative agricultural commodities.

The global coffee retail market, for instance, is valued at $102 billion (Sh11 trillion).

Low yields and quality have been attributed to a complex cocktail of factors, key among them unaffordability of inputs, depletion of soil health due to poor farming practices and changing weather patterns linked to climate change.

The conference should also deliberate on how government can partner with the private sector and academia in strengthening agricultural extension services, with a bias towards innovative but affordable crop management techniques. This includes adoption of climate-smart coffee farming.

Besides mitigating the impact of extreme weather events, such strategies will help the industry attract and nurture a new generation of coffee farmers who are more inclined to achieving high productivity using the latest methods and technologies.

The third issue is: how do we reduce the structural inequalities in the coffee value chain to make it more inclusive with regard to ordinary farmers?

Influential players

It is an open secret that coffee milling and marketing in Kenya is controlled by a few influential players who dictate how much coffee is sold, to whom and for how much.

Once a farmer delivers their crop to the factory, they become mere spectators in as far as processing and marketing are concerned.

Eliminating ‘joyriders’ in the multi-layered coffee production system will significantly increase the money that goes into the pocket of the farmer by reducing overhead costs.

The proposed Coffee Act had attempted to address this particular issue by empowering coffee factories to engage in direct marketing, but this is still an ongoing discussion.

To his credit, Mr Gachagua has vowed to deal ruthlessly with ‘five brokers’, whom he claims have cornered Kenya’s coffee sub-sector.

He must not relent in this quest, much as it will not be an easy task.

In a nutshell, Kenyans expect nothing short of bold and consequential outcomes from the conference slated for Meru in June, to usher in a sustainable, inclusive and prosperous coffee industry.

Mr Choto is co-founder and director, Network for Strategic Dialogue. Email: [email protected]