Kericho, April 20 — On a fine Monday morning, and as the sun beats down on the tea farms in Kaptoroi village in Kenya’s Kericho County, Sarah Keter plucks tea together with her brother-in-law and his wife. They are helping each other rotate and pick the green leaves in their farms for sale at the buying center just across the road from their farm.
Today, and since the confirmation of the first case of coronavirus in the country on March 13, they have to sell their tea very early in the morning by 9:45 am. This is in line with the government directive that all workplaces should close by 4 pm, three hours before the 7 pm to 5 am curfew that was imposed by President Kenyatta. As such, factory workers have to be out of the factories by 4 pm.
They are all jovial as they tell of the looming good prices for their produce, as the demand goes up for tea in Europe and other countries who are on lockdown, and people need tea inside their houses. This coupled with the measures and directives that the Kenyan Ministry of Agriculture has put in place to ensure that tea farmers in the country get value for their produce.
“I listened to the news and heard what the Minister said about phasing out cartels and brokers in the tea sector. For many years, tea was all we knew and tea farmers were rich. It is very sad that we are now categorized as poor, despite farming tea, a major foreign exchange earner for the country,” says Thomas Keter, Sarah’s brother-in-law.
After the lorry that ferries tea arrives, Sarah walks to the tea buying center where upon arrival she washes her hands and puts on a mask before she is allowed to enter the center. She then spreads her tea on the floor and a factory official inspects it for quality freshness then weighs them, after which she is handed a sales receipt.
In its presser last week, the agriculture ministry announced that tea farmers are going to get 50% their proceeds remitted directly to their factory accounts, rather than go through bank-management accounts where they are mismanaged, delayed, and later written off as bad loans.
The farmers here have known no other source of livelihood and proceeds from the sale of tea has seen them take their children to school, but in most cases are left with nothing. For instance, when someone has a farm and cannot pick tea on his own like the Keters, one has to hire another person to pick it. They then pay half of what the tea is worth to the person picking it.
One kilogram of tea is sold to the Kenya Tea Development Agency Holdings at Ksh16 ($0.16) per kilo. The person picking tea gets Ksh8 ($0.08) per kilo. This is before a farmer is also met with deductions for development, such as building of factories, supply of fertilizer, and many other statutory deductions.
“What we normally only depend on is the yearly bonus because what we get monthly is paid out to the pickers. And that is why we have decided as family to help each other pick the tea, so we can at least save the money,” Sarah says.
Kenya’s Minister for Agriculture Peter Munya in his April 16th press conference at Kilimo House in Nairobi introduced the measures, which he says will help place the Kenyan tea farmers in their rightful place.
“We want them to earn 50% of what their green tea leaf is worth so that farmers can also have a monthly income like every other person, and then you can give them the rest 50% in what is called the yearly bonuses,” he says.
Kenya’s tea sector alone generates 23% of the country’s total foreign exchange earnings, making it one of the leading exports for the country. The sector also employs and supports a population of about five million people. It generates over Ksh117 billion in export earnings and a further Ksh22 billion in local sales.
According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO), the main buyers of Kenyan tea are Pakistan, Egypt, and the UK accounting for more than 65 percent of national tea exports. Forced to a lockdown by the COVID-19, the demand for tea has gone up as people need tea as they stay indoors.
“In spite of the economic and social challenges forced to Kenya and indeed the global community by the coronavirus pandemic, tea production and trading have continued unabated, with tea exports being shipped to about 40 market destinations monthly since January 2020,” said Munya.
This has come as a blessing in disguise for the tea farmers in Kenya who can now smile as both the government changes in the sector as well as the rising demand for tea only means that they will smile to the bank in the next few days.
Still on April 16, Kenya Airways dispatched a Dreamliner plane with 40 tons of fresh produce to London. The plane was a passenger one that had been grounded to curb the spread of COVID-19. Tea farmers are happy that tea is among the fresh produce that is being ferried to Europe and other markets.
“We hope that a cure is soon found and that the market will continue to be steady so that we can still supply the produce, which include this tea,” Sarah says.
The Kenyan government now gives the tea farmers a 14-day period to participate by airing their opinion on the measures that the government has taken. The farmers already support the measures and say that they will support the policies before the government gazettes them after the fourteen days.
“These are good news to the farmer that has taken too long to implement and therefore has led to the farmers suffering when they should be earning better,” says David Kosgei, a chairman at the Kaptoroi tea buying center where the Keters sell their tea.