This archive report was first published on 22 June 2021.
Published on June 22, 2021, a group of coffee farmers from Nyeri county in Kenya are turning to a new method of coffee farming to boost their production and earnings.
Single stem pruning, a technique that involves tending to only one stem in a coffee bush and cutting off the others, has been adopted by the farmers in a bid to improve the quality and quantity of their coffee.
According to the Food and Agriculture Organization, this method enables new stems to grow in the place of the stems that are cut off, allowing farmers to increase their production.
Speaking during a field visit to members' farms, the group's chairman, Patrick Muchiri Wokabi, said that the system, if perfected, will improve the production and quality of their coffee.
"The reason why we have come up with this model is that with normal farming where farmers tend to three or more stems, the quality of coffee berries remains poor so grades such as AA and AB which fetch premium prices can never be realised," said Muchiri.
The adoption of single stem pruning comes at a time when coffee production in the country has been on a downward trend due to neglect of farming of the crop by many farmers.
The country's production has gone down to a mere 20,000 metric tonnes in a year, unlike in the eighties when Kenya had double this production capacity.
