How Kenya is helping farmers enhance coffee production

There are several coffee estates enjoying support from government and effective coffee value chain that coupled to make coffee farming a dependable business in the East African country.One of the coffee farms visited by this reporter is the Sasini coffee farm, a subsidiary of the Kyanzavi farmers company in Kangundo, Macha Kos county, about 70 […]

There are several coffee estates enjoying support from government and effective coffee value chain that coupled to make coffee farming a dependable business in the East African country.
One of the coffee farms visited by this reporter is the Sasini coffee farm, a subsidiary of the Kyanzavi farmers company in Kangundo, Macha Kos county, about 70 kilometres east of Nairobi, the capital of Kenya.
Sasini coffee farm with its 450,000 coffee trees carefully and neatly arranged in straight rows with enough space for expansion on a 300 hectares farmland has the capacity of producing 200,000 kilogrammes of coffee annually since the farm relies on rain-fed agriculture.
Conducting this reporter round the farm, and its coffee factory, General Manager of the coffee section of the farm, Mr. James Muriithi Kieu, said Sasini, a member of Sameer Group, is into growing, processing and marketing of tea, coffee and dairy products with perfected plans to commence bee and flower farming.
He said: “Wherever there is coffee, there is bee. Another thing that attracts bees is flower. So, when you have a coffee estate, automatically you are a potential bee farmer. If you add flowers to your coffee estate, that is another money spinner. The major business could be the coffee, but you also export the flowers and make a lot of money from the honey with very little extra effort.”
Sasini started as a single farm coffee operator with multiple farms located in several parts of the country. The farm became operational in 1952, in what was then known as the Kenya Colony before the country gained independence in 1963.
Known as Doondu Estates Limited, then, with only one coffee farm in Kiambu District of the Central highlands of Kenya, Sasini acquired three more coffee farms in Kiambu District in 1959.
Though Sasini started as a coffee company, sometimes in 1964 it ventured into tea production when it acquired shares in one of Kenya’s leading tea companies, Kipkebe Limited, in the Great Rift Valley region of Kenya. It also acquired significant shares in Mweiga Estates Limited, a major coffee farms operator, with large coffee farms in the highland coffee zones of the Mount Kenya Region in the country’s Central Highlands.
Kieu said his company is planning to commence the use of irrigation farming as that will enable them harvest twice in a year as against the single harvest now under the rain-fed system of farming they practice, adding: “You know, an estate like this can last for 60 years. You can be harvesting it continuously for 60 years before you replace the trees.”
Explaining the value chain in coffee business, Kieu said in addition to commercial, agricultural and micro-finance banks that are assisting farmers in Kenya with loans to enhance their agricultural activities, the government has established a Coffee Development Fund (CoDF) to specifically assist coffee farmers with friendly loans that attracts between one to five percent interest, depending on how much one is borrowing.
He added: “Officials of such lending financial institutions will not just give you the loan and go and sit down in their offices. No, they will follow the value chain until you sell your products. They will assist you to get certified improved seeds, the required fertiliser and other agro-inputs, their extension workers will be around to give you necessary advices and guide you till you harvest. They will monitor how you process your coffee beans till you export or sell to local refineries.
“At harvest, the coffee is picked and sorted out. The red ones you see here are the best. When you pick only the red ones, your coffee will not be much but it will certainly be of high quality. The red skin on it is squeezed out during processing and is used as manure in farms.
“The coffee beans are then kept in the fermentation tanks for 6 hours to extract the sugar in them. They are then soaked overnight. At day break, they are dried to reduce the moisture in them from 65% to about 10%. The coffee beans are then milled for export. From the harvest to the milling of the beans it takes about three months.
“We do export the coffee ourselves. Those that want to export their coffee will handover to export marketing agents that will process the products for export, grade them then ship to the international market. Those that want to sell their products locally will do so directly or through auction. Both ways the farmer makes his gains, depending on the quality of the product.”
The company has tea farms in the Highlands West of the Rift Valley in Sotik covering 1,437 hectares and two large tea factories, Kipkebe and Keritor, with a combined capacity of 10 million kilogrammes of black CTC tea annually.
Sasini grows coffee on eight independent estates in the Central Highland of Kenya, covering a total of 912 hectares of farmland with annual production of about 1,500 tons.
Kieu said: “We aim to produce the highest quality of Arabica coffee by ensuring that only the red rip berries are picked from the trees. We have maintained traditional coffee varieties including SL. 28, French mission, SL. 34, K7 and Blue Mountain. Each estate has its own pulping and wet processing facility. We have maintained the fuller, redder and heavier quality of coffee in high demand all over the world.”
He said the company has its major coffee mill located at Kamundu coffee estate in Kiambu District with a daily production capacity of 4,800 bags of clean coffee. It also mills coffee from small and medium coffee growers located all over the country.
He said: “We have consistently been able to mill the highest percentage of national coffee production in the country showing the confidence we enjoy from farmers in the country. In addition to the mill, we have installed a modern coffee roaster in the same facility. The exporting arm of Sasini, Aristocrats Tea and Coffee exporters has been licensed and has effectively exported coffees to international blending houses and roasters.”
Sasini has its tea packaging facility in Mombasa and a coffee roasting and packaging facility in Kiambu and currently produces branded tea and coffee products for the domestic market within its retail division with its branded tea products that include Sasini Gold, Sasini Chai and Sasini Premium in tea bags form, while its range of Coffee products includes Kahawa Bamba and Sasini Instant coffee.
The Resource Mobilising Officer of Kenya’s Coffee Development Fund, Mr. John Joel Amimo, said part of the mandate of the fund is to finance the farming and development of coffee business in Kenya, encourage local production and marketing of coffee, export and draw Kenyan youth into coffee business.
He said the fund is assisting coffee farmers in Kenya with loans that do not require stringent conditions or collaterals to enhance coffee farming, develop existing coffee factories and help increase the farmers easy access to international buyers of coffee.
He said when the production capacity of Sasini Company was dwindling due to shortage of funds, CoDF provided the company with 20 million Kenyan shillings (Ksh), about N35 million. He said when they paid back the loan, Ksh 300 million was again given to the company to expand its coffee farming and production.
Amimo said the fund has supported several coffee estates in Kenya with loans, technical advises and guidance that enhanced their production capacity, adding: “Look at the case of Sogomo estate that you just visited, it is one of the successful coffee estates in Kenya with the financial support of the fund.”
Sogomo coffee estate has 40,000 matured coffee trees of the highly valued Ruiru and Batian coffee brands on a 40 hectares farmland at the outskirts of Kiminini town, Kitale – Kakamega road.
The Operations Manager of the Sogomo estate, Mr. Lewis Sogomo, said there are 27,000 coffee trees of Batian variety and 13,000 of Ruiru which are all producing. He said the estate also has 13,000 other trees that are expected to start bearing fruits by the end of this farming season.
He said: “Recently, we also planted some seedlings. We have also placed some modern bee hives at strategic places in the farm. We shall be enhancing the flowering process by keeping bees in the farm. Bees aid in pollinating the coffee flowers while at the same time being an extra source of income.”
Though the CoDF said it has earmarked huge sums of money to give as loan to youth that want to go into coffee business, those that cannot readily go into coffee farming are supported to establish mobile coffee shops that are seen all over the capital city.
When this reporter visited the Nairobi coffee auction, record of coffee prices on export for the first quarter of 2014, 1.7 million kilogrammes were offered for sale with premium grade AA offered for $376 as against earlier price of $394.
At one of the auctions in February, a 50 kilogrammes bag of coffee was sold for $230, as against the price of $170 in January. But in March the price appreciated to $280, representing 3 percent increase.