The Kenya Coffee Producers Association (KCPA) has moved to educate the public on the need to consume Kenyan coffee as a way of stabilising the ever falling world prices.
Sarah Nyaga, a Project Manager with the farmer’s organisation said Kenyans must be willing to domesticate consumption of coffee just like tea and other products produced in the country.
She said Ethiopians consume over 80% of their coffee as compared to Kenyans who only consume slightly 5% of their coffee.
“You can see most of the Ethiopian coffee is consumed at home but with the bulk of the Kenyan coffee produced for the export market,” she said.
Nyaga said by a simple fact that Kenyans would start consuming their own coffee; the issue of world falling prices will be a thing of the past.
She said her organisation has now embarked on a sensitisation campaign that aims to reverse the Kenyan trend and instead ensure most of the coffee produced in the country is consumed locally.
Nyaga said dependence of foreign market for the coffee farmers has led to their exploitation with marketing agents taking advantage of them.
She said KCPA has introduced a system where they relay market report to the farmers on daily basis which the farmers can use to question the marketing agents in the event of foul play.
“Auction market report is important in that they are able to keep the farmers updated on the coffee world prices,’ she said
“KCPA supports the milling and selling of coffee by individual counties which will eventually get rid of cartels in the sector,” Nyaga said.
She said the arrangement has now opened the widow for societies to sell their coffee directly to the market and will fetch more profit to the farmers.
The arrangement can also easily solve the challenge of farm inputs which at time is out of reach for the small scale farmer in that the same society can make arrangements to provide their members with the same and recover later when the farmer is paid for his produce.
By Irungu Mwangi
