Kenya Tea sector continues moving forward.

[RV Pundit]

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KTDA makes 83B - that can only mean total sector earned 150-160B. This sector has really transformed rural economy in most parts of kenya - especially my little Konoin. This one sector with horticulture that kenya has move to become the global leader.

http://www.nation.co.ke/business/Superb-year-for-tea-farmers-as-yields-increase-to-Sh84-billion/996-3372346-dulhy3/index.html

[RV Pundit]

http://www.ktdateas.com/pdfdocuments/BonusAdvert2016.pdf

[hk]

 This is one area that small scale farmers out do large scale farmers in terms quality and income per tree. I which we could liberalise the coffee sector to match tea sector. This days we have small companies packing tea like eden tea in limuru http://www.karirana.co.ke/index.php/eden-tea doing very well. The tea,macadamia, dairy and horticulture are bright spots in agriculture.

[RV Pundit]

Yeah - something ought to be done about coffee--I just don't understand why it keep going under and under. It wasn't until I think 2002 when Tea overtook coffee in earnings. If we had 10 crops all earning 1B dollars from export - then we would be somewhere. Tea, Horticulture and Dairy are already there. I tend to think Livestock can easily get there. RV & Northern counties need to help pastoralist modernize --build the value chain - try to get export market in EU/US/Asia. The time for Kirima type slaughter houses is the past. We need private investment of really high quality meat - like you have in Botswana. Fishing.Maize.Sugar.Rice.Wheat & Barley. That is all you need to transform agricluture. The share of  agriculture in GDP need to move to 60-70% to reflect the labour invested there....and then slowly move back to 10% as we develop and industralized.

Reforming agricluture should be our top priority before we lie to ourselves about the other sectors of the economy. This is the elephant in the house. Once we truly exploit our agriclutural potentially then we will have the capital to move into the more complicated stuff.

This is one area that small scale farmers out do large scale farmers in terms quality and income per tree. I which we could liberalise the coffee sector to match tea sector. This days we have small companies packing tea like eden tea in limuru http://www.karirana.co.ke/index.php/eden-tea doing very well. The tea,macadamia, dairy and horticulture are bright spots in agriculture.

[hk]

Yeah - something ought to be done about coffee--I just don't understand why it keep going under and under. It wasn't until I think 2002 when Tea overtook coffee in earnings. If we had 10 crops all earning 1B dollars from export - then we would be somewhere. Tea, Horticulture and Dairy are already there. I tend to think Livestock can easily get there. RV & Northern counties need to help pastoralist modernize --build the value chain - try to get export market in EU/US/Asia. The time for Kirima type slaughter houses is the past. We need private investment of really high quality meat - like you have in Botswana. Fishing.Maize.Sugar.Rice.Wheat & Barley. That is all you need to transform agricluture. The share of  agriculture in GDP need to move to 60-70% to reflect the labour invested there....and then slowly move back to 10% as we develop and industralized.

Reforming agricluture should be our top priority before we lie to ourselves about the other sectors of the economy. This is the elephant in the house. Once we truly exploit our agriclutural potentially then we will have the capital to move into the more complicated stuff.

Unlike tea where small scale farmers produce high quality tea in coffee small scale farmers produce low quality coffee but expect good prices. The people now making money in coffee are the middle producers with at least 5 acres with their own pulping factories that don't need to sell to cooperatives . Coffee quality is determined by acidity of the soil, weather, type of coffee and husbandry. Everything being equal the most determinant thing is husbandry. Cooperative pay all farmers the same price irregardless of the individual farmer quality of coffee. And that therein lies the problem.
In livestock we need to establish feedlots to fatten our livestock. In kenya I think we only have 2 feedlots, morendat owned by pius ngugi of kenya nut and ADC farm. We need to establish such linkages because most of the livestock we slaughter are underweight.