Meru — Meru Central Coffee Union (MCCU) has urged farmers to plant more coffee trees in anticipation of good times ahead.
Addressing the media from his office, MCCU chairman Mr. Ephantus Majau said the current government aimed at enhancing productivity in terms of agriculture and one of the cash crops expected to reap big from the programme was coffee.
Mr Majau said the government had already exhibited its commitment to increasing the farmers' earnings by setting up the ministry of cooperative as a stand-alone ministry.
"We are very optimistic that our, President Dr. William Ruto, is fully committed to helping farmers reap more from their endeavours and this is the reason we want to expand our coffee farms in order to earn more," he said.
He said the Union has already established several coffee nurseries with quality seedlings which were at the moment ready for planting.
"We are heading towards the rainy season and we are calling on our farmers to visit our nurseries in order to buy quality coffee seedlings. A single tree of Grafted Ruiru variety will be selling at Sh50 while the non-grafted one will be selling at Sh25," said Mr. Majau.
He said the two varieties were the best, especially in the Meru region and farmers should stick to them in order to get adequate returns.
He said the union was also keen in terms of value addition of the produce and was currently the best at this out of the 14 coffee unions in Kenya.
The chairman also called on the government through the Ministry of Agriculture to streamline the process that is currently being used to distribute fertilizers to farmers adding that it was very tedious and time-consuming due to limited collection points.
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He said coffee farmers do not use the same fertilizer as other farmers and therefore theirs should be distributed through the unions which would in return distribute it to their farmers.
"Distributing the fertilizer through the union will be easier since we know where our farmers are located and we can thus take it to the appropriate centres of collection," said Mr. Majau.
MCCU is one of the oldest coffee unions in Kenya having been formed in 1952 under the name Meru African Coffee Cooperative Union (MACCU) to cover the larger Meru District.
Later in 1970, MACCU split into three; Meru South, Meru Central, and Meru North Farmers' Co-operative Unions.
MCCU is affiliated with 34 cooperative societies with 97 wet mills and an active membership of 152, 645. The union's asset base has grown from Sh500 million to 1.53billion.
More to that, profitability is on upward growth from a loss of Sh9,533,499 in the year 2012 when the current board took over to a surplus of Sh58,570, 192.
To promote domestic coffee consumption, the union from the year 2012 has embarked on enhancing the capacity of the value addition department, making achievements such as the establishment of Batian Coffee house and coffee shop at a value of Sh4 million and a 30-kilogramme roaster machine, building extension and packaging machine at a cost of Sh10 million. - Kna
