Coffee farmers in Trans Nzoia County to Benefit From post-harvest processing technology
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 manufacture of Coffee Post Harvest processing machines.
Speaking during a sensitization forum the county CEC member for Agriculture Mary Nzomo said they will work closely with Coffee Estate Farmers & coffee cooperatives societies in the county to promote best processing technologies & 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 Mrs. 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 CEC 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 programme 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 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 CEC.
The Colombian embassy representative Claudia Milena Vaca said coffee is one of Colombia’s dearest products that have a similarity with Kenya saying 95% of the coffee in Colombia is produced by the 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 can directly engage relevant government departments.
Ms Milena welcomed the partnership with the coffee farmers in the county towards farm mechanization on coffee through Pengaos adding that Colombia has made strides not only because of the factories but through the working with other components that supports the coffee farming industry.
Coffee Research Institute representative Joseph Kimemia said the best quality coffee that comes from Trans Nzoia County and even other regions are now using the Trans Nzoia coffee to blend, hence boosting their quality.
“Sometimes farmers can produce the best coffee but during the handling and the processing period the quality can be tempered with hence compromising the quality of the coffee from the farmers,” Mr Kimemia said.
He said the partnership with the PENAGOS machinery company is going along to reduce that, hence farmers produce the best quality coffee.
Mr Kimemia added that apart from ensuring coffee farmers get the best farm machinery for the coffee farming the department is also looking at the efficiency and the machinery that will not use a lot of energy for the farmers to run.
“We are even looking forward to even having machinery that can be driven by solar energy because Trans Nzoia has both the rainy season and sunlight that can be generated with enough solar energy,” he said.
Kimemia also said CRI is also giving out coffee seedlings to the farmers across the county at a subsidized rate calling on more farmers to embrace the crop saying it now has the best selling price in the market where a farmer can get up to 600, 000 shillings per acre which is far too high compared with the maize farming.
Stephine Wainaina Kamondia, the PENAGOS country sales representative said the organization
started producing coffee farm machinery in the year 1892 with aims of promoting agriculture through the use of minimum expenses for the coffee processing.
Apart from providing the farm machinery for the coffee farmers, Kamondia said they provide farmers training on the need to embrace coffee processing with the use of modern equipment that requires less water and energy saying many coffee farmers lose the quality of their
coffee harvest due to the use of poor quality machinery.
Kamondia said the company has a variety of eco pulper coffee machines ranging from 300 kilograms per hour halftone, one tone 1.5 tones .2.5 5 tones 7.5 tones up to 20 tons per hour that adding that this will give both small scale and large estates farmers an opportunity to choose according to their needs.
He added that the company also offers after-sale services to its clients whereby when a farmer purchases the machines it is delivered to the farmer train on the use of the machines.
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