RAYMOND, Maine — Kenya is one of the dominant coffee exporters in the world, officially exporting at least 95% of the coffee it produces annually. The coffee farmers in Kenya have found solid success, which will improve as hundreds of Kenyan coffee farmers now have direct access to the global coffee market.
History of Coffee Farming and Poverty in Kenya
Kenya’s coffee industry officially began operations in 1893, the year in which colonizers brought coffee to Kenya for the first time. Still, the first recorded instance of planted coffee in Kenya, which would later become an economic resource, falls sometime after 1960. Before the 1960s, Kenya was still under strict colonization by the British.
Until 1960, Kenyans had almost no freedoms with their agricultural prospects, including coffee. In the immediate post-1960 years, there were stringent regulations on what people could farm and how much of that plant they could grow. Since then, the governmental regulations have shifted to allow for more accessible markets with more potential for financial growth amongst the farmers.
Kenya’s coffee is essential to the nation’s economy, earning Kenya 22% of its annual total export income in 2005. There are more than 700,000 coffee farms of various sizes throughout Kenya, all with varying degrees of income and impact on the community.
Despite the importance and necessity of the farming community to Kenya’s agricultural sector and gross domestic product, approximately 25% annually as of 2018, Kenya’s coffee farmers often struggle financially. Kenya’s poverty rate is 17%, undoubtedly with many coffee farmers factoring into this figure.
Countless Kenyan coffee farmers make less than $42 per month, about 5,000 KSHS. Many Kenyan coffee farmers fit this criterion, are fighting poverty daily and struggling to provide more income for themselves, their families, and their farmhands or communities.
The primary factors challenging farmers’ earnings are climate, poor management by the intermediaries or societies/unions responsible for tracking, managing and marketing the coffee farmers’ produce and fluctuating and unpredictable global coffee prices, according to Solidaridad. There is little that Kenya’s coffee farmers can do about the worldwide coffee prices or the climate.
Kenya’s farmers have decided there is little reason to use a third party for their sales. By disregarding the usage of these third parties, Kenya’s coffee farmers intend to maximize their profits fully.
Changing Kenyan Coffee Farmer’s Regulations
The significant change for Kenya’s coffee farmers, particularly those in Kisii county or who are members of the Gusii Coffee Farmers’ Cooperative Union (GCFCU), is that they can now avoid using trade intermediaries and can trade directly into the market. Using a third party instead of direct trade poses strategic and economic problems for Kenya, the market and the farmers themselves.
Senator Njeru Ndwiga, one of the leading supporters of this change, noted that many of Kenya’s farmers felt pressure to take trades made with the third party. A third party is another individual that helps to drag out the trade process, another tactic that can limit a farmer’s earnings. If farmers waste too much time trying to get the best deal, they are losing time that could be spent using those funds to support themselves or their farmhands.
The farmers felt pressure from the various marketing agents that have been able to talk them down to less than the desired or asked price, thus reducing and limiting their earnings, according to Capital Business. The limited profits leave Kenyan farmers struggling and the Senator sees this change as a strategic move to reduce poverty in Kenya, especially among the coffee farmers.
Direct Buyers Impacting Coffee Farmers and Poverty
Farmers with fewer than 300 coffee trees “remained amongst the poorest in the world” due to the limitations such few trees can have on potential output and produce for a harvest, according to Solidaridad.
This probability is why the change to the Kenyan coffee farming industry should target the small farms, giving them a better chance of increasing their earnings. The farmers in the GCFCU now have the opportunity to control their earnings while remaining in the union.
Until now, the farmers had to rely on outside help from the buyers’ intermediaries to organize workers who would mill and ship the coffee. Often, the middleman would take away jobs that the coffee farmers could easily find new farmhands to fill, increasing the local economic flow.
There are concerns that the farmers cannot meet the high supply demands without a third party. However, farmers and the GCFCU representatives expressed that the promise of extra income has fueled the farmers’ desire to do anything to meet the demands.
There are talks of Kenya’s coffee farmers with small shareholder farms planting more trees to increase their chances of more bountiful harvests. The extra income without the third party and having direct access to the global market could allow these farmers the freedom to buy new supplies for their farms with renewed vigor, according to The Star.
Direct market access is not something these farmers are taking lightly. The promise of income that was unimaginable to Kenya’s coffee farmers before and the chance to escape poverty while contributing to the country’s third-largest export is too good an opportunity for coffee farmers to pass up.
– Clara Mulvihill
Photo: Flickr