DP Gachagua-led taskforce wrests coffee sector from cartels

A coffee farmer picks the cherries in Nyeri County.

One year ago, Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua was loaded by President William Ruto with an additional mandate of entrenching reforms in the coffee subsector.

In an Executive Order issued January 9, President Ruto tasked Mr Gachagua to oversee the implementation of coffee reforms, with the key agenda of weeding out cartels across the crop’s value chain.

Besides performing duties specific to the Office of the Deputy President, Mr Gachagua was tasked to oversee implementation of the reforms that were spearheaded by the Coffee Sub-Sector Reforms Implementation Standing Committee.

On January 22, the DP sought prayers from Kenyans while admitting that cartels were deeply rooted not only in coffee but also in the tea and dairy agricultural sub-sectors.

Read: Inside the world of brokers who set the prices of food

“I am requesting you to pray for me so that God leads, protects and gives me wisdom like that of Solomon in the Bible. It is not easy to snatch the udder from a calf that has been suckling without interference. Telling that calf to cease sucking the milk that belongs to the farmer will create problems and I know they (cartels) will fight back. There will be war,” Mr Gachagua said in Othaya, Nyeri County.

“We will receive some kicks from them (cartels) but that will not worry us. We must restore dignity to our farmers by ensuring they get dignified pay for their produce. They should source for another alternative to siphon money but not through the agricultural sector,” he added.

This is the year that the Kenya Kwanza administration resolved to source direct foreign markets for all the coffee produced in the country and ensure that the small-scale farmers earn more for their produce. It intends to increase coffee production from the current 50,000 metric tonnes annually to 200,000 metric tonnes within five years.

The country’s second-in-command has frequently called out the cartels in the coffee sub-sector for exploiting the farmers with low pay. This led to the reforms being dubbed as ‘The Rigathi reforms’.

The reforms being spearheaded by Mr Gachagua are intended to revolutionise the marketing and sale strategy of the parchment.

As a result, the government started exploring direct sales of coffee to the United States, Europe and other lucrative global markets in bid to revive the coffee subsector for better returns to farmers and boosting of foreign exchange earnings.

Last month, 16 foreign coffee buyers and processors resolved to source the coffee beans directly from farmers in Nyeri, after realising that the producers were being exploited by middlemen.

The buyers resolved to elbow out the middlemen from the supply chain after a seven-day tour of coffee farms and factories owned by farmers’ cooperative societies in the county.

Read: How coffee sector is run by cartels and what DP Gachagua should do

The companies were Babylon Trading (USA), Al Peren (Turkey), Phoenix Coffee (Germany), 2nd Mile Coffee (Singapore), Coffee School Project (Germany), Connect International (Egypt), Truth Coffee Roasting (South Africa), Tribe Coffee Roasting (South Africa), Ken Bean (China) and Origin Coffee Roasting (South Africa).

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