Coffee farmers in Trans Nzoia County are set to be beneficiaries of a post-harvest processing technology that will contain losses incurred due to wastage and rotting of their harvest owing to reliance on manual processes.
This follows a partnership of the county government of Trans Nzoia, Coffee Research Institute Kitale, and Penagos, a Colombian Company that specializes in the manufacture of Coffee Post Harvest processing machines.
Speaking during a sensitization forum the county executive member for Agriculture Mary Nzomo said they will work closely with Coffee Estate Farmers and coffee cooperatives societies in the county to promote the best processing technologies and techniques hence ensuring farmers get the best quality beans only comparable to a market leader like Colombia.
“This is good news to our coffee farmers in the county who have continued to register great interest in the coffee value chain for it will help them improve on the quality of their coffee in order to fetch better prices in the market,” said Nzomo.
She urged coffee farmers in the county to take advantage of the partnership by ensuring they join coffee farmers’ groups for collective processing, bulking, and marketing of coffee to have high economies of scale.
The CECM said the county will continue to provide coffee extension services and issuance of subsidized seedlings to support the uptake and expansion of the crop in the saying they distributed more than 10,000 subsidized coffee seedlings to farmers across the county under the crop diversification program this year.
“I applaud the cooperation from our partners Solidaridad East Africa and CRI Kenya for walking closely with our coffee farmers and providing capacity building on coffee agronomy practices to ensure the productivity of the coffee bushes are enhanced,” she said.
Nzomo added that Trans Nzoia produces the best quality coffee in the country and the county is looking forward to ensuring that coffee farmers in the county sell processed, packed, and branded products directly to consumers to enable them to fetch more returns.
“This will see the farmers establish a brand name for the county’s coffee worldwide and this is one of the ways to attract investors into the county to put up coffee factories and processing plants,” said the CECM.
The Colombian embassy representative Claudia Milena Vaca said coffee is one of Colombia’s dearest products that have a similarity with Kenya saying 95 percent of the coffee in Colombia is produced by small farmers.
“There is a need to bring to your attention that Colombia is not in the country to compete but to collaborate to boast coffee production in the country,” said Milena.
She added that Colombia is now producing 13 Million sacks of green coffee as a result of cooperation between the coffee growers with a very strong federation of coffee growers who work towards sustainability urging the coffee farmers in the county to come up with formidable farmers’ groups that will directly engage relevant government departments.
