Nandi County governor Stephen Sang has called on the national government to invest in the tea sector by providing targeted grants and adopting strategies to modernize tea factories as a measure to ensure quality outputs that can enhance good returns in the auction market.
Sang, who was speaking during the Sireet Out Growers Empowerment and Producer (OEP) company Annual General Meeting (AGM) held at Nandi Hills, divulged that the current factories are relying on outdated traditional methods that deny tea farmers good prices in the market.
“Two weeks ago, bonuses for tea farmers were declared. We have seen huge disparities in tea bonuses between the prices of tea and the bonuses. A lot of theories have been given around why prices east of Rift are higher than those west of Rift,” pointed out Sang.
“We have seen advancement of technology in different sectors. In the agriculture sector in particular the tea sector we are still entertaining the old system that is over 50 years old,” pointed out Governor Sang, adding that to be able to deal with the challenges affecting tea prices there is need to adopt modern technology in the tea sector.
According to Sang, the traditional manual tea tasting to ascertain the quality of tea in the auction market fosters bias, inconsistency and unfair disparities in prices thus denying tea farmers their rightful earnings.
He noted that the tea sector needs to work on reforms that will enable replacement of the manual tea testing to ascertain the quality of tea in the market with the modern tasting technology as measures to tackle the issue of tea price disparities based on regions.
The county boss said that introducing modern tasting methods like blind tasting and digital tasting using scientific tools such as near-infrared spectroscopy will enhance objective, transparent and consistent quality assessment that will in return restore tea pricing thus strengthening Kenya’s credibility in the global market.
“For decades tea farmers have endured an auction system that relies on subjective human tasting, a method that has fostered bias, inconsistency and unfair disparities in pricing. Our farmers deserve a system that rewards quality without prejudice,” added Sang.
Additionally, he utilised the platform to commend Sireet OEP company tea farmers for their continued expansion of investment in the tea sector encouraging more farmers to buy shares in this farmer-owned enterprise.
Wilson Tuwei, the chairman of Sireet OEP supported the governor’s sentiments revealing that farmers were greatly affected by this year’s drastic drop in the tea bonus price adding that the government schools should put in place measures geared towards increasing tea profits for farmers.
“For quite some time the tea prices have been so low. We are calling for government intervention to reform the tea sector to ensure higher prices that can benefit tea farmers,” noted Tuwei.
By Ruth Mainye
