Small-scale tea farmers will get subsidised fertilisers after the Kenya Tea Development Agency (KTDA) received 47,800 tonnes (956,000 of 50kg bags) of fertiliser for the distribution of over 650,000 smallholder tea farmers across the country.
The shipment of fertiliser arrived at the port of Mombasa on Monday, and Cabinet Secretary for Agriculture and Livestock Development Mithika Linturi completed the offloading and distribution procedure.
In order to enhance harvests this year, according to Linturi, who waved off the shipment to the upcountry, the government decided to supply fertiliser to farmers all throughout the nation.
According to him, farmers use more than 95,000 metric tonnes of fertiliser annually, and two ships are scheduled to dock in the nation—one has already arrived and the second will in two weeks.
From now until November, growers would be able to acquire enough fertiliser for use on their tea farms, he claimed.
“This is timely as the rains have just set in, and the application of fertiliser at the right time has a serious bearing on production. We are pleading with the farmers to double their efforts and pick the fertilisers on time so that we can boost our production this year,” he said.
He stated that, based on the current market, farmers will be able to produce more green leaf kilogrammes and get more revenue.
In order to ensure that farmers get the most out of their work, he continued, the government is presently developing tea reforms that will result in new administrative and legal frameworks.
“The government continually tries to support KTDA and farmers so that they get fertilisers at affordable prices. When we started the subsidy programme to support our farmers, the 50-kg bag was going for Sh. 3500 last year, and the government had to make sure it goes down as we are now selling fertiliser at Sh. 2500,” said the CS.
Linturi said that the government has implemented a number of projects to increase value and that all of the value chains on which they have concentrated are on track.
He added that they had also decided to collaborate with the necessary parties to be able to offer the funds necessary to complete common user facilities that would increase the value of the tea and enable farmers to sell finished goods.
The CS said that the government is giving support to the KTDA and farmers’ factories for the installation of processing lines that would enable the production of orthodox tea a high priority.
“Worldwide, orthodox tea is fetching high premium prices, thus calling for investment on that line so that across the country there are many factories, which will in turn translate to good pricing for tea farmers,” Linturi said.
