This archive report was first published on 18 November 2019.
Uasin Gishu County farmer Mary Muchemi has found success in coffee farming after abandoning maize, a crop she had been planting for years.
According to Muchemi, poor maize prices motivated her to shift to coffee farming in 1982. She started by planting the SL28 variety on a six-acre parcel of land and has since increased the acreage to 45 acres.
"Coffee is better since once you have planted you don’t need to re-plant like maize and other crops. You just prune or cut the branches for new cycle," Muchemi explains.
The farm gets an average of 30 kilogrammes of berries from each tree, with a total of 25 to 40 tonnes produced annually. The coffee is graded into seven categories depending on the size of the berries.
Muchemi has a guaranteed market for her coffee, which she sells to Coffee Mills Services in Eldoret town. The prices for the coffee vary depending on the grade, with the AA or AB grades fetching up to Sh200 per kilogramme and the lowest grade earning Sh70 per kilogramme.
Assistant director in-charge of coffee production in Uasin Gishu County, Luka Rotich, advises farmers to get the right agronomical practices and nutritional requirements to attain higher yields. He also notes that intercropping with macadamia or Gravelia can provide shading effects and increase earnings by Sh300,000 per acre.
