For long the coffee industry in Kenya has been run by cartels that have made it hard for the smallholder farmer to hold them accountable. Once a smallholder farmer delivers their coffee at the factory, they lose touch with their coffee until when they are paid. To know who bought their coffee, and by how much has been left to be a reservoir of the marketing agents. This is also due to the fact that many smallholder farmers are illiterate and there is no check in place to make sure that their interests are safeguarded.
It is for this reason that we as Kenya Co-operative Coffee Exporters Ltd came up with a Coffee Value Chain Management System that will enable the farmer to track the movement of their coffee from the farm to the factory, to the mills, to the marketing agents and finally to the buyer.
As KCCE we envision a coffee industry where even the buyers can be able to check online how much of coffee a certain society is holding for sale, the grades and the attributes of the coffee. In fact, the buyer could go ahead and place a quote for the coffee. This will ensure there is a track record of activities, hence bringing the so longed for transparency. This will bring sanity to the coffee industry and ensure that the smallholder farmer get the full benefits of their toil in the sun.
The other gaps that we intend to
address include:
leadership and governance issues, lack of women and youth
involvement across the entire coffee value chain, lack of smart agricultural
best practices, lack of adequate extension services, among others. In total we
intend to impact on a total of 23, 000 small holder farmers.
We are kindly requesting for in order to impact on the smallholder farmers.
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